The worker females of the Mandible species renovated the entirety of Angon with startling speed.
Sakti had briefly hesitated over whether to demolish the sacrificial altar at the base of the plaza. The thing stood like a looming guillotine, an eyesore to his senses. Ultimately, however, he chose to spare the stone pillars, holding his nose and preserving a structure that held a different sort of significance for the Zerg.
The defeated tribes had no complaints about this arrangement.
Upon being sent to Angon, they had initially faced the prospect of imminent death. Now, suddenly told they could live, their working speed became frantic. It was enough to make even Sakti, who was usually remorseless in exploiting his subordinates, feel a faint twinge in his black heart.
The black Core Seed had them hollow out a massive space directly beneath the main plaza, deep under the thick layers of bedrock.
It was a fortification akin to an air-raid shelter. Above their heads lay boulders that even heavy shelling would struggle to pierce. Unless the Armed Species deployed orbital cannons from space, the minor skirmishes of Ja’s surface forces would find it nearly impossible to break into this enclosed sanctuary.
He also expanded the cluster of buildings surrounding the Great Altar to house the newly joined defeated tribes.
The male Zergs placed under Gela’s command were no longer so terrified once they discovered they could return to their tribe’s settlement after work. During the day, they stayed obediently within the Information Nest, slowly learning things they had never encountered before.
More than one Zerg asked the Core Seed what he intended to do with that massive underground space, but he only offered a smile and never said a word.
The Short-wing tribe currently occupied the position of trusted aides. These gentle creatures, previously responsible for tending to larvae and eggs, began to stumble through the process of handling external affairs, coordinating Angon’s internal management while facilitating cooperative ventures.
Kai, meanwhile, fully leaned into his role as a fawning courtier, finding himself like a fish in water when it came to foreign trade. Sakti did not grant him administrative authority, but when it came to business, he threw this "chosen laborer" out and let him play his hand freely.
As it turned out, Kai did have a head for business.
The attributes of a sycophant, a profiteer, and a corrupt official were perfectly embodied in him. With the Great Altar as his backing, Kai became as close as family with every black-market trader. No matter how difficult a resource was to obtain, he would find a way to scrape it together for Sakti, even if it meant circling through ten different channels and passing through six or seven middlemen.
Consequently, while the Core Seed let him go out and perform his theatrics, he also had the Short-wings and the Information Nest keep a close eye on this middle-tier Zerg, lest he one day stir up a mess too big to clean up.
In a time of peace, Kai would likely be the type Sakti would have investigated thoroughly.
But in times of upheaval, he was incredibly useful.
With such an eel present, the originally stagnant water was stirred. The capital of both Angon and Ja was revitalized, and currency—denominated in energy stones—began to flow.
Ja’s economic structure was singular to a fault; the trade goods and the trade currency were absurdly one and the same: energy stones.
This had made previous transactions dreadfully dull. Worker females would exchange the most basic survival supplies with black-market vendors, and the vendors would settle the accounts in energy stones.
Now, the black female Zerg was leading those defeated tribes in massive construction projects, stimulating the economy through internal demand. Suddenly, the variety of supply and demand became multifaceted.
This race could have previously served as the poster child—the poster *bug*—for War Keynesianism.
They perfectly demonstrated the principle that if one wished to sustain war through war and achieve economic development through conflict, the war must not be fought on one’s own soil, and one must absolutely win.
However, the Zerg had met their Waterloo in this fight against humanity. Both sides had been beaten half to death; neither could truly claim victory. That momentum of rapid advancement seemed to have been seized by the throat by a sudden, giant hand.
Sakti felt he could have another chat with Clark later. Not establishing a complete energy industry chain on Ja was a true waste of God-given resources.
The early bird gets the worm; the late bird only gets to chew on dirt.
By the time the other Core Seed tribes figured it out and started heading to the docks to grab some "industrial restructuring" fries, it would be hard to say who could seize the market and more resources.
He could hardly imagine how delightful and cheerful it would be if, once he found the Red Tai Sui, he had an inexhaustible energy planet backing him.
And he wouldn't even have to pay taxes.
During Sakti’s reign, he had never owned an energy mine of his own. All discovered stellar core energy and Akashic Rifts were the public property of the Empire.
This meant that for every single expense of the Red Tai Sui, those finance ministers would bicker with him for ages. A single expedition required at least dozens of approvals and hundreds of stamps.
After becoming a female Zerg, the Core Seed felt his potential as a "faint-hearted tyrant" frequently stirring.
Being in such a lawless place lacking restraint, the temptation of an entire mining planet was simply too great.
It was like placing chicken breast under a dog’s nose; it is a dog’s nature to snap its jaws. Similarly, the deep-seated flaws of human nature were hard to uproot. Every time he lay in his nest pondering, "Maybe I should take the restoration route again," he would be pulled back by his basic sense of morality, engaging in a mental tug-of-war.
A human cannot—or at least, should not.
In his previous life, the Federation’s conservatives and reformists fought to the death while a swarming mass of Zerg surrounded them, leaving humanity with no way out. Internal strife and external threats pushed the human race to the brink of collapse.
The destruction of Planet V217 became the fuse. After standing for two hundred years, the Galactic Federation met its final schism.
The military hardliners took power, forming a military-industrial complex. The entire star sector fell into darkness and chaos. The reformists, led by Marshal Ye Ci and Sakti—the leader of the Red Tai Sui—fought the Zerg on one side and the Federation on the other.
It wasn't until humanity’s first expedition took the head of a King Zerg that the tide of this triangular tug-of-war turned.
At that time, he and the Red Tai Sui had not yet climbed to the very top. However, the Swarm Mother’s head served as his ladder to the heavens, sending him up to the clouds in a single step.
The endless period of war had nearly exhausted his attributes as a "human," and his emotions were suppressed to a boundary line of near-zero fluctuation.
Death became a cold number, no longer capable of being linked to the true form of life.
Yet, after he had endured the torture of radiation sickness, exhausted all his vitality in a loveless, diligent service, and closed his eyes only to open them again... he had regained a tiny bit of gentle emotion because of raising a child—raising a sub-adult male Zerg with genetic defects.
This was perhaps fate’s most absurd arrangement.
To prevent the Zerg and humans from fighting again, and to allow the weak Zerg to survive, he had to carve a path between two contradictory goals. Thus, the path became increasingly overgrown with thorns.
In the near future, he clearly needed to speak with the owner of the energy planet again and venture into the mining of energy ores.
Only vast resources could sustain his ambition and the blueprint he had planned.
Clark would inevitably have to board the same ship as him.
If the other party wouldn't board, he would have to find a way to replace that female Zerg.
The latter course of action was far more difficult than the former and did not align with his policy of maximizing profit while minimizing damage.
The progress of the Mandible species leading the other Zergs was gratifying. Not only had they finished renovating all of Angon, but they had even carved out a vast new space in the plains extending toward the mountains.
As long as he could get the permits, he could start construction.
The entirety of Ja was slowly recovering from the recent chaos, and a new order was gradually forming. Rather than letting those worker females waste their excess energy on internal infighting, it was better to drive them all to work.
For now, the progress bar was growing steadily. This led Sakti to calculate that once Kai’s trade items arrived, he would go have a chat with Clark.
He would strive to pull in a sponsor for his money-making venture.
As it happened, before he could find that high-ranking Core Seed to pitch his "advertisement" again, the other party contacted him first.
When the video connection was established, the silver-gray female Zerg on the other side looked over.
His appearance was as spotless and tidy as ever, but the space he occupied had large splashes of blood on the walls and floor. In the background, pitch-black Armed Species were moving in and out, busy with unknown tasks.
"Do you mind explaining why my satellite base intercepted a discarded core power furnace being sent to Ja?"
Clark spoke with a smile, casually tossing the cloth he used to wipe his hands to an attendant beside him.
"That truly is miraculous news."
Sakti remained expressionless. Since the other party wasn't physically in front of him, the holographic image couldn't reach out and slap him.
"It’s hard to imagine which Zerg would be so audacious as to ship such a thing here."
"Not just audacious; I think he wants to provoke the entire Core Seed race."
Pacing slowly until he found a place to sit, Clark glanced at him.
"You really are like a human in their rebellious phase. The moment I look away, you cause some bizarre commotion."
The black Core Seed was left speechless by the sheer rarity of that tone.
Sakti had lived two lives. After becoming a female Zerg, he first experienced the mindset of an old father raising a cub; and still as a female Zerg, he now experienced the treatment of being watched over like a cub himself.
The other party’s finger tapped in the air, and a list written in the Common Tongue materialized between them.
A massive pile of part names—a very familiar pile of part names.
"I think you’ve moved beyond the realm of audacity. You want to poke a hole in the sky."
Gray eyes, shimmering with a half-smile, watched the pitch-black female Zerg.
"If it were any other Zerg, they might be baffled by your ideas. Unfortunately, I am quite familiar with the ways of humans—I mean, from their habits to their technology."
"Perhaps you are volunteering to be Prometheus, stealing the fire for those middle and low-tier Zergs, only to be hung upon the mountains of the wasteland to let the birds feast on your entrails."
"The end for rebels who dare such things is usually not very good."
"Your understanding of human literature is admirable."
He was actually a cultured Zerg. This made Sakti feel a deeper level of curiosity regarding the "human he knew" that the high-ranking species had mentioned before.
It was definitely not a simple passing acquaintance. They had to have known each other very well for a Zerg and a human to talk about everything from power furnaces to mythology.
He had been with Gela for a long time, but he couldn't guarantee that when chatting with other Zergs, he could casually pull out Zerg history to make a point.
"To reduce your unnecessary wariness, why not come to Ja for a short trip? You can visit the entertainment programs about to be launched at the Great Altar you established."
He emphasized the words "you established."
The other party’s Zerg Common Tongue was very elegant, which inexplicably led Sakti into the same rhythm, making his own speech more formal.
"We’ve been closed for renovations lately. Once we reopen, there will be brand-new entertainment programs to watch—provided you return the power furnace to me."
Clark: "???"
Perhaps having never seen a peer so shameless, so ready to push his luck, and so lacking in fear, even he wore a speechless expression for a moment.
"Even though it’s a discarded item, that thing was very expensive," Sakti sighed. He genuinely felt that the other party wasn't that angry; it was nowhere near the level of severity where he would be hung out to feed the birds.
"I went through a lot of trouble to get it as a gift for Gela—Roxanne."
"Giving your mate something like that..."
Clearly, the silver-gray female Zerg was shocked by this unconventional gift-giving strategy, to the point that he didn't even comment on Sakti’s sudden frankness.
The high-ranking species asked sincerely, "May I ask which tribe you originally belonged to?"
***
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