NOVEL NEXT Chapter 9: Research
Outside of the Forest of Death.
"Excellent work," Shino said as he reached out his hand to pet the cute worker, "With your help, I can expand my Zerg forces. I will also be able to map out the Forest of Death before the Chuunin exam and have an edge over other competitors."
The drone hummed in acknowledgement. It had successfully explored the Forest of Death and collected valuable samples of biomass, all without detection.
But its mission was far from over because a drone will work till its death. There was no dissatisfaction however. They were model workers.
As Shino absorbed the samples with his hatchery ability, he could sense the surge of energy within himself. Not only that, he could also hear the notifications from the system.
Notification regarding the research progress of new units!
Shino's eyes glinted with excitement. Commanding the drone to return and continue its exploration, Shino made sure no one was around before discreetly leaving once more.
Arriving at the training grounds, Shino sat on the ground. As he awaited the arrival of his team, he checked on his system.
[Acquired 10 Units of Biomass]
In just a few short days, he had amassed a passive income of 10 biomass. If he wanted to gain the same amount of biomass through food consumption, he had to eat for an entire week!
Of course, this is under the condition that he eats normally. If he could afford to eat at a buffet everyday, he could gain 10 biomass or more within hours, but that may raise a lot of suspicion if done too often. The original Shino was not a big eater...
He couldn't afford to draw too much attention to himself, not when the stakes were so high.
After all, the Aburame clan tends to be stared at by that bad old man. It was still safer to harvest slowly and cautiously with his drone. With each new acquisition, he grew stronger, more resilient. And one day, he would emerge from the shadows, a true dominator of the swarm.
Moving on to the next notification, Shino's glasses glinted with fervor.
[Research Progress Updated: Hatchery(0.1%), Zergling(22%), Hydralisk(1%), Baneling(0.5%), Roach(11%), Overlord(0.1%) …]
"With the gene samples collected by the drone, there is finally some progress towards new units. It will still take some time, but it will be worth it in the long run. Not only that…"
Although the Zerg Dominator was a powerful system, it was more apt to call it a hive mind. It didn't require a management system outside of its telepathic communication, so it didn't really understand systems such as graphical user interfaces, system functions, or human cognitive processes, such as cartography and depth perception.
Despite lacking understanding regarding the meaning of the term, it still used the word 'system' because this term bore an uncanny connection to the fragments of the host's memories, aka his memory.
In fact, the system itself had its own mysterious language.
But this wasn't something Shino could understand. So, during its mysterious birth, the system automatically processed the vocabulary in his memories to establish the most basic yet important communication with the host, allowing Shino to communicate with it through their mysterious psychic connection.
But this was the extent of the pre-established functions.
Being an upstart hive mind, many functions had to be 'unlocked' or 'programmed' by Shino's thoughts and memories. Even its previous status display was in lines of text with no particular interface.
It wasn't until Shino manually took things into his own hands that a user interface was finally formed... after lots and lots of communication with the Zerg Dominator System.
Now, he acquired a veritable system interface that showed much more data and was visually more appealing.
Glancing at the newly optimized system interface in his mind that he organized, Shino couldn't help but have a sense of achievement.
The Zerg Dominator System Interface now featured a sleek and ominous interface that resembles a spider web. The center of the interface features a large, pulsating orb that represents the Hive Mind, and held within that orb was a 3D model of himself. Branching out from the center orb are various strands that lead to different sub-menus for units, evolution, research, and database.
The central menu is his status screen, displaying data regarding Shino himself, ranging from physical body data to mental stats and abilities along with their learning progress. This granted Shino a more intuitive approach to understanding himself.
Needless to say, the units menu displayed the details and status of his available bugs.
The database was an archive of important information he had collected, ranging from gene pool data to intel and memories. All of these are categorized and sorted for ease of access.
Functioning similar to an evolution chamber, the evolution menu was an assistive interface used to mutate his available bugs. Mutation options, derived from his gene pool, were displayed for each type of bugs, ranging from sensory organs to tougher shells for defense. The variations are limitless.
However, there were limited options at the moment because there wasn't enough gene data in the database. But it was clear that more options will be available in the future, allowing him to mutate his bugs accordingly and adapt to a wider variety of situations.
Finally, there was the research menu, which showed Shino's current progress on unlocking new units and mutations. In here, Shino's eyes fixated on the creation sub-menu located at the top, taunting him with its grayed-out button.
This was different from the evolution menu, which currently only allows for the mutation of his bugs, but still restricted to the same species. This creation menu will allow him to evolve his existing bugs into a new species and even research completely new units based on his needs!
He yearned to unlock this forbidden tab, but knew it was currently out of his reach.
As a rough estimate, he had to unlock most of the basic Zerg units, from the lowly Zergling to the gargantuan Ultralisk, before the creation sub-menu would unlock.
Outside of the weak drones, which were worker units evolved to adapt to any new worlds, the system required a vast amount of genetic data to be collected in its gene bank before it could begin researching new Zergs.
It was a matter of survival. Without sufficient data collected from creatures of the world, the spawned Zergs may fail to adapt and would be rejected by the world. This rejection could potentially lead back to him, the host.
Shino was not one to take such risks. He knew the consequences of being rejected by the world could be disastrous.
If he were a powerful host, he could lead his Zerg army to conquer the world that was rejecting him, but as a newcomer, he didn't have the strength nor the desire to find out what the consequences of rejection might be.
Then again, if it was a powerful Zerg host, it wasn't necessary to go through the troublesome process of gene collection for most worlds because their gene bank was already vast enough to spawn zerg variations that wouldn't be rejected by the new world.
On the other hand, his startup zerg system had its limitations, but Shino was determined to work within them.
He reminded himself that while he couldn't create new Zergs yet, he could still evolve his Aburame clan bugs through the clan's techniques.
Not only that, his special bio-energy could be applied to both his drones and bugs. It had a lot of potential yet to be discovered!
The natural evolution of the bugs in the world would naturally not face rejection.
These would grant him new genetic data to add to his gene pool and bring him closer to the self-evolution he sought.
Shino's imagination ran wild with the possibilities that awaited him once he unlocked the creation sub-menu.
Would he be able to create Zergs that could journey through space, or ones that could control minds? Maybe he'll develop an ultimate new species by merging zerg with chakra or immortal mode?
He couldn't wait to uncover them all as it meant that he was one step closer to self evolution into a perfect god-like existence!
Ah, he went on wild fantasy ride again. Ahem. Focus on the present...
Shino Aburame stood silently in the training ground, watching as his opponent, Kurenai Yuhi, approached him step by step, like a cat ready to play with her prey. He had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
Although the original Shino certainly had an advantage in the early games in the anime, Shino knew his growth speed would eventually be surpassed by other characters, leaving him in the dust as a gag character.
He knew that he needed to improve his strength if he wanted to keep up with his batch of graduates, especially with Team 7 going on a mission to the Land of Waves.
His teacher was the best answer to his needs.
Now, it was time to focus on the battle ahead.