My God domain is the endless abyss Chapter 76: Origin

The conflict surged onward, escalating with a brutality far exceeding previous encounters.

"Report: Zerglings reduced to 17.03%," Maeve's voice cut through the command network with unwavering calm.

"Report: Zerglings population down to 16.97%..."

"Report, the Zergling...

The overall Zerg numbers finally neared the precipice of complete annihilation. For the first time, their population count dipped to a mere few hundred billion.

This was momentous news, astonishing even. As the war's tide turned, the vast, churning gray oceans of the Void began to recede, withdrawing like a defeated ebb.

Yet, any thought of celebration was silenced. All knew the war between Heavens Mountain and the Zerg was far from concluded.

Peter's gaze remained fixed on the information panel, the data's cold, flickering light reflecting on his face as he anticipated Maeve's next update.

As anticipated, her voice continued, shifting focus to the critical figures now: the count of legendary-level entities on the battlefield.

"Total hostile creatures exceeding legendary level count: 130 million... Correction, 142 million... Correction..."

"Correction... correction..."

Maeve's tone stayed even, but the implication of her words struck like a blade.

A new breed of Void Zerg had emerged, starkly different from their predecessors. These horrifying beings bore no resemblance to the fragile insects of the past.

Each individual possessed a power equal to, or surpassing, a legend. And their numbers were swelling rapidly.

Some were encased in thick, monstrous armor, enabling them to carve through enemy formations like mobile siege weapons. Others sprouted clusters of fleshy wings, dominating the skies with speeds eclipsing starships, their sheer numbers shrouding the heavens. Yet others had adapted to expel lethal spores, capable of infecting entire squads within mere seconds.

——————x——————

"That's... horrifying," Cillian breathed out.

From the depths of the Endless Abyss, he observed the fierce clash between the Zerg and the Heavenly Army, his expression a mixture of awe and utter disbelief. On the front lines, a gargantuan Titan worm ensnared once-powerful Heavenly warriors, swallowing them whole as if they were mere drops of light.

"I could never have fathomed the Zerg could mutate into such forms," he whispered.

As the words left his lips, recollections surfaced – images of "Zerg archetypes" he had once studied at Grimstone University.

He couldn't help but let out a sigh of reverence. The most sophisticated Zerg schematics found in those old archives paled in comparison to this. The apex of those designs barely reached legendary status, and even then, they were singular entities, incapable of mass reproduction. Those concepts, while revolutionary, felt more like isolated alien monstrosities than true hive organisms.

Yet, the ancient deities credited with their creation were celebrated, their designs lauded in lecture halls and enshrined in scholarly texts.

But what Cillian was witnessing now rendered all of that archaic.

These Zerg were not the product of divine design; they were the outcome of raw, untamed evolution.

Creation itself had become the ultimate artisan.

"Astounding..." he murmured. "A single ancestral line capable of spontaneously generating over five thousand distinct species... this eclipses all known divine history. Their sheer capacity for design alone is..."

Before he could complete his thought, the captive brain worm, its immense, pallid form pulsing subtly beside Damon, interjected.

"Great Lord of the Abyss, you err!" it exclaimed, its viscous voice quivering with certainty.

"The design itself holds little significance. True importance lies in how one leverages the inherent qualities born from that design!"

Cillian's eyes narrowed subtly. "Indeed?"

He turned his attention to the corpulent brain worm, which was still feeding vast quantities of biological data into Damon's neural network. The instant the worm dared to interrupt its master, Damon delivered a sharp blow to its head with one of his hardened spinal appendages.

The brain worm blinked, bewildered by the sudden punishment. It obviously had yet to grasp the implications of speaking out of turn within the Abyss.

Still, it resumed its earnest explanation, its mouth tendrils swaying as if guiding a lesson.

"You are mistaken, my lord. In your perspective, all things require deliberate design, but that is not entirely accurate! Observe more closely, and you will perceive that the foundations for these Zerg forms were hinted at long ago!"

"Consider their armor, for instance," it continued, wriggling with fervor. "Those formidable chitinous plates you observe now – ordinary insect swarms already possessed such structures! They were merely constrained by resource limitations. Their exoskeletons only materialized around their joints due to insufficient material to cover more extensively!"

It gestured towards the colossal, kilometer-long Zerg monsters in the distance that were currently devouring angels.

"What you witness today is the fruit of immense resource reallocation! By channeling everything into a solitary organism during its hatching, the swarm achieved utter perfection from mere simplicity!"

"Chitinous armor is hardly an uncommon design. The genuine difficulty in biodesign resides in its application—integrating such features into living systems without causing collapse, all while doing so with extreme efficiency across billions of individual organisms!"

It clicked its mandibles together and drew nearer, as if to drive home its assertion.

"You, Magnificent Lord, perceive patterns where none exist. The true brilliance of evolution lies not in novel invention, but in profound optimization. It is the capacity to utilize what already exists to its absolute fullest potential!"

Cillian offered no interruption. Instead, a faint smile touched his lips.

He felt no offense. On the contrary, he held profound respect for the brain worm's sharp insight. Regarding biological application and design comprehension, it surpassed most deities he had ever encountered, perhaps even himself.

"So, that is the crux of it," he mused. "It is not the design itself, but the masterful utilization of its inherent features. These mutated swarms that attained legendary status were not inherently special beings. They were, in essence, ordinary insects subjected to an exponential increase in resource investment."

The brain worm vibrated with eagerness. "Precisely! You grasp it now!"

Cillian's gaze grew intense. He leaned forward slightly, his voice deepening.

"Then enlighten me, Brain Worm..." he articulated deliberately, "how might I achieve a perfect fusion between the genetic sequence of the devils and that of the Zerg?"

In all his preceding experiments, the Zerg genome had utterly overwhelmed that of the devils, absorbing it completely.

Now, his ambition was to alter this outcome.

He yearned to forge devils capable of standing alongside the Zerg, beings possessing the same potent adaptive and evolving strength.

Having contemplated the extraordinary biological structure of the Zerg, Cillian had conceived a daring, potentially perilous idea: to introduce Zerg gene sequences into the very fabric of the demons' genetic code.

Should formidable, continuously evolving demons inherit the Zerg's unparalleled ability to meticulously shape and reconstruct their physical forms, they would undoubtedly become a force utterly unstoppable. They would eclipse every other lifeform within this realm, ascending to become the ultimate species.

Initially, however, it remained purely a theoretical concept. For the moment Cillian commenced his preliminary trials, he discovered the Zerg's genetic sequence was vastly more dominant than that of the demons. Regardless of how potent an abyssal creature might be, even the most powerful among the demons, upon the introduction of Zerg genes into their cellular structure, the outcome invariably remained the same.

The affected organism would succumb to an irreversible process of mutation, its original form erased, its consciousness obliterated.

In the most extreme of his experimental endeavors, Cillian had managed to implant a single, incomplete strand of Zerg DNA into the cellular matrix of a Demon. Within a mere twenty-four hours, the Demon's structure disintegrated, twisting into the grotesque form of a mindless, insectoid husk.

These stark results laid bare an undeniable truth: the Zerg's genetic sequence resided leagues beyond the current paradigm of demonic design. Their genetic material was ferociously dominant, akin to wolves unleashed upon a flock of intimidated sheep.

Thus, following innumerable unsuccessful attempts, Cillian reluctantly set aside the notion of direct fusion. He harbored a deep-seated fear that even a minuscule fragment of Zerg DNA escaping his control could transform the Endless Abyss into a colossal breeding ground for the swarm. Should such a catastrophic eventuality occur, the only recourse would be to incinerate the corrupted plane, reducing it to utter ash and eradicating it entirely.

But now, with the brain worm secured within his grasp, the audacious idea resurfaced.

This was because the brain worm possessed not only exceptional intelligence but also the innate capability to design creatures that mimicked the form and function of demons. It could engineer semi-perfect hybrids, an achievement far beyond the reach of even the most accomplished divine biologists.

While Damon diligently extracted its biological design data, Cillian recognized in his soul that neither of them could replicate the brain worm's innate aptitude for creation. The creature was inherently designed for life engineering. To it, the complex work of gods was merely elementary arithmetic.

This was the very reason Cillian posed his request. He held the hope that the brain worm could assist him in analyzing the Zerg's genes directly, deciphering their fundamental essence, and subsequently devising a method to apply that essence to the devils native to the Abyss.

Yet, to his profound surprise, the brain worm demurred.

Or, to be more precise, it outright rejected the possibility that such an objective could ever be attained.

"Magnificent Lord of the Abyss," the brain worm proclaimed with solemnity, "your inquiry outlines a fantasy that cannot materialize. The genetic codes of our two distinct races can never be integrated, let alone achieve a state of perfect fusion."

Cillian's countenance remained placid. "Oh? And on what grounds do you base that assertion?"

The brain worm gently traced the nascent shell forming along its cranium and responded with deliberation, its tone carrying an ancient gravity.

"Because I am Zerg, and I bear witness to the absolute truth of our genetic sequence. The genetic code of the Void Swarm has remained immutable since the very genesis of existence. From the moment our kind first emerged, from the ancient creation of the old world until this present moment."

"Any attempt to alter it will fail. We can infect and convert other carbon-based organisms, but that is consumption, not fusion. No matter how powerful our hosts are, our sequences cannot merge. You may use your divine fire, your higher-order power, to destroy our genes temporarily, but that only burns the surface. As long as the Swarm’s will exists, the genes will regenerate, repairing themselves to their original form."

"Our code cannot be altered, cannot be copied, and cannot be merged."

The creature paused, its expression darkening with something that almost resembled sorrow.

"Even an independent Zerg like me, severed from the Swarm’s will, has lost the right to hatch the true lineage. If my genetic sequence is damaged, I can no longer restore it. To build a swarm again, I would have to imitate the Zerg genome crudely and craft a new, incomplete imitation. The original pattern is locked."

"A lock?" Cillian asked softly.

"Yes," the brain worm nodded, its tendrils trembling. "A lock that prevents us from deviation. One that stops us from falling into corruption or becoming something else. It was woven into us long ago, to preserve what we are."

Cillian fell silent, his mind processing every word.

It seemed the brain worm had lost access to the genetic authority of the swarm.

It was like a device that once had access to an infinite network, now permanently disconnected. Even if the connection flickered, the firewall would always reject it.

"I see," Cillian murmured at last. "I understand now."

He wasn’t disappointed; if anything, he was impressed. The Zerg stood at a level of life far above that of Demons or gods. Their genome was not just advanced, it was divine in its own right.

It made sense; if gods could freely alter their genetic sequence, the Zerg would have been wiped out long ago.

Still, something in the worm’s words drew Cillian’s attention. When it had spoken of their origin, it had said something interesting.

He narrowed his eyes. "Wait. You said your swarm has existed since the beginning of time. But this multiverse is only a prototype. How can you predate it?"

The brain worm hesitated. Then, with a faint tremor in its voice, it spoke.

"The world we inhabit is a prototype, yes. But we..." it paused, its expression distant, "we were not born here. The Void Swarm came from the cycle before this one, from a multiverse that shattered long ago. We are merely what survived its collapse."

"Just survivors," it whispered.

—---------------------x----------------------

"How goes it, Maeve?"

Peter’s voice cut through the static as he returned from the battlefield, his golden armor drenched in blood. He tossed the head of an insect the size of a mountain into his treasure vault before summoning attendants to clean the filth from his body.

Moments later, standing refreshed once more, he faced Maeve.

"The statistics are being compiled, brother Peter," she replied, her voice cold but steady. Her electronic eyes shifted from red to blue, then finally to green.

"The situation has improved significantly. Thanks to you and the angelic legions, the number of Zerg above the legendary level has been greatly reduced."

"Good." Peter nodded with satisfaction.

Though he hadn’t faced true mortal danger in the recent battles, the experience was still draining. The very sight and stench of the insects’ blood repulsed him. Even a drop felt like contamination.

But Maeve’s next report made his expression tighten.

"However, not all worlds have been accounted for. Many remain under siege. If those worlds fall, the Zerg will have enough resources to restore their numbers completely."

As she spoke, several projections appeared before them, holographic maps of the besieged realms.

Among them, one world stood out. It pulsed like a vortex of black and red, swirling ominously.