Chapter 381 Kill
There are a total of six tails of Astrophage, and the end of each tail has been aimed at Chen Ming's Zerg fleet just now.
The stellar matter flowing on the edges of the icosahedron at its head is being sent to each of its tails through the structures in its body.
Chen Ming had already guessed what type of attack the Star Devourer was using.
He immediately asked the Zerg fleet to spread out, expand the distance between each other and the overall space occupied, and maintain irregular movements, at least not standing in the same straight line to avoid being affected by subsequent attacks.
Chen Ming's order had just been issued, and the Zerg fleet had just taken action.
Six rays of stellar matter emitted from the tail of the astral phagosome swept across the entire Zerg fleet.
As long as the star material touches a little bit, the Zerg fleet will only end up being burned, without any ability to resist.
Even if the Zerg has the genes of the Aurora Wind Spirit and is resistant to plasma, in the face of the plasma of a real star, this plasma resistance can only delay its destruction for one second.
Chen Ming now feels more and more that the Zerg fleet needs a shield.
If the Zerg fleet had a shield, at least each ship would be able to resist for a few more seconds, preventing the enemy's attack from directly touching the armor and hull, causing the entire ship to be destroyed.
There is no use thinking about it now, Chen Ming can only continue to observe the battlefield.
The six stellar material rays that continuously and repeatedly swept over the location of the Zerg fleet seemed to have endless backup resources. They had no intention of stopping after destroying more than thirty of Chen Ming's capital ships in the blink of an eye.
If you think about it carefully, it does seem like you have endless energy.
After all, the organ under the Astral Phage's body that resembles the mouthparts of a mosquito has penetrated into the star, constantly absorbing the star's energy.
Unless Astrophage's own body can no longer bear it, the star's energy will be endless for Chen Ming's Zerg fleet.
The Zerg fleet tried its best to avoid it.
If you simply avoid it, it is basically difficult to escape the fate of being hit by the star's material rays and being burned in space.
But it’s not like the Zerg can’t do anything.
While avoiding the Astral Phage's attack, the Zerg fleet was also constantly trying to focus fire on the Astral Phage's tail to cut off its means of attack.
The Astral Phage only had six tails in total, and the Zerg fleet had hundreds of ships left after being swept away by a wave of stellar material rays.
The firepower of this number of battleships is enough to break off the limbs of an Astral Eater.
And only by breaking off its two tails, the remaining four star matter rays it releases will not be able to effectively suppress the Zerg fleet.
The Zerg fleet can in turn suppress the Astral Eater with firepower and break off all its tails like a snowball.
The recovery speed of the broken tail cannot keep up with the speed of the broken tail of the Zerg fleet.
The Zerg fleet can even draw out firepower to attack the Astral Eater's body.
For a moment, Chen Ming even felt that he could slowly suppress the Astral Eater until he died.
But he immediately changed his mind
Because behemoths like Astral Eater have their own unique abilities just like Plane Nightmare.
I saw that the edges of its head suddenly began to grow...
To be precise, it's not that the edge is growing, but that the blood vessel-like organs inside the edge that are responsible for transporting star matter in its body have broken through the edges of the astral phagote's head and grown outside its body.
The head, which could almost be said to be an icosahedron, was suddenly covered with bright yellow tentacles accompanied by dazzling orange-red light. The originally aesthetic geometric shape turned into a messy and twisted cluster of tentacles.
The ends of these tentacles are slender, and it can be seen from the high-precision sensor that there are extremely dense closed holes that appear to be openable.
The body of Astrophage suddenly half-sinked into the surface of the star, increasing the intensity of extracting the star's material, and temporarily stopped restoring its tail.
This resulted in a large amount of energy absorbed by the astral phagocytosis having nowhere to go, and all of it being accumulated inside its body, causing its head surrounded by tentacles to expand to the extreme, and the light also reached the extreme.
Every tentacle that was transformed from the "blood vessel" that transported star matter in the Star Eater's body became extremely bloated and fat, and the dense holes at the end became more conspicuous during this drastic change.
The star material was compressed in this small and dense hole, and finally, when the body of the Star Eater was about to be unable to hold on.
It loosens the seal on these holes, allowing Hengxin valuations to shoot out like fire.
Just by flying a little distance, you can see the terrifying density and lethality of these fire rains.
Either jump to a long distance to evade, or you can only resist forcefully. There is no way to keep the Zerg fleet at a distance that can cause damage to the Astral Eater at any time and still avoid it.
But if you jump to avoid it, it will directly give Astrophag a powerful advantage.
The attack range of this behemoth can be farther than that of a battleship. After the distance is extended, if you want to get closer, you can only rely on another jump.
Although the speed entering the jump is fast, the speed coming out of the jump is not.
As long as the Star Eater is on guard, it will be too easy to seize the opportunity at the end of the jump to hit the Zerg fleet hard.
Just like Plane Nightmare did before.
It seems that the Zerg fleet has encountered a little trouble.
Under such restrictive conditions, there is only one way to stay here and continue fighting against Astrophag.
That is, the fleet is gathered together, and the bodies of some of the Zerg warships at the front can resist the damage, which can minimize the overall damage suffered.
But Chen Ming knew without even thinking that if he really ordered this, what would follow would definitely be star material rays that could destroy everything.
The Zerg warships gathered together are simply the best targets.
He must find a way to survive this wave.
For a moment, Chen Ming couldn't think of any reasonable way to defend himself.
However, he thought of a way to attack.
The dozen Hercules-class ships at the front of the Zerg fleet, closest to the star and the Star Eater, suddenly galloped forward.
All organs inside them, except for the biomass jump engines, are rapidly converted into the most basic energy crystals, and these energy crystals are continuously activated as they get closer.
When all the energy crystals were activated to the extreme, these dozen capital ships directly made a short-distance jump, jumping closer and closer to the star.
Hitting the astral phagocytome head-on, it had just ejected stellar material like a meteor shower.
The energy of the energy crystal exploded in full force, and the destructive fireball drove the Hercules class into hell. It also completely exploded all the star matter ejected by the astral phagocytosis, giving space for other Zerg fleets behind to move.
At the same time, it also covered the astral phagocyte behind the fireball.
The sensor's scan of the astral phagophyte behind the fireball was temporarily interfered with, making it impossible to determine its specific situation.
At this time, the equipment that can observe stars brought over by the Department of Climate Change suddenly came into play.
Many equipment arranged near the star can avoid the fireball of Hercules' self-destruction and help Chen Ming observe the astral phagocytosis from other angles.
The act of just absorbing a large amount of material ejection seemed to be extremely draining for Astrophage, and it seemed to realize that the self-destruction of the Hercules class was its opportunity.
Therefore, during the short time it took to separate the Zerg fleet from the fireball, most of its body sank beneath the surface of the star.
It seems to be trying its best to absorb as much stellar material as possible to recover.
But it seems there's more to it than that.
Chen Ming used an equipment installed in the orbit of the star by the Climate Modification Department that can observe the shallow material of the star. He saw new movements of the astrophage mixed in the star's material.
Its body sinking into the star suddenly cracked open.
Split from the middle to the sides, most of the inside of the body is exposed.
This allowed Chen Ming to clearly see its internal structure.
It has many structures similar to ordinary organisms, including a complete digestive system and various muscle tissues used to maintain its body movements. All of them are strong enough to resist the high heat of the material inside the star.
And at the end of the needle-like organ that absorbs star matter and can stretch inside and outside the body, there is an organ that is not known to be its heart or something else.
This organ is shriveled at this time, with only a little bit of Hengxin substance left inside.
The astral phagocytosis is absorbing star material and restoring the vitality of this organ structure by directly splitting the body and exposing everything inside to the star.
And when this organ began to be filled with stellar matter, the stellar matter flowing in the "blood vessels" in its body became active again and continued to circulate in its body.
This organ seems to be the most critical organ in its body, and should also be its weakness.
Unexpectedly, everyone from the Climate Change Department and so much equipment were brought here and there would be unexpected surprises.
Chen Ming originally wanted to test out the weakness and retreat temporarily, waiting for the next opportunity to launch a surprise attack.
Just like the last time I played Nightmare of the Planes.
Probing, retreating, and phase space attack, the three-dimensional nightmare will die.
This time he had the same idea at first.
However, the situation of Astral Eater is different from that of Plane Nightmare. Its weakness is inside the body and will not be easily exposed.
This time it was Chen Ming who forced it into a hurry and used some large-scale attacks before it was forced to expose its weaknesses.
If Chen Ming waits for the next time, Astrophage may not necessarily expose its weaknesses, and it may not even come out of the star.
He'd better take this opportunity to kill it without giving it a second chance.
Chen Ming called the insect queen.
Immediately, a reverse transition device farther away from the star was started, and it continued to extract the star's material before the astral phagocyt's attack came.
Star Eater clearly felt this, and its seemingly low IQ also allowed it to be fooled again.
It once again accelerated the extraction of stellar matter, restored some of its shriveled special organs, allowing it to protrude its body from the star, and aimed a tail at the place in the distant space where stellar matter appeared.
The remaining Zerg fleet immediately pounced on it, squeezing out the last bit of energy to attack the Astrophage.
At the same time, several Hercules made short jumps and self-destructed very close to the surface of the star.
The stellar material ray released by the astral phagocytosis successfully destroyed the reverse matter transition device that Chen Ming had prepared. The fireball of Hercules' self-destruction also appeared near the star again, once again covering the area where the astral phagocytosis was located on the star's surface. .
Astrophage seems to think this is the same as Chen Ming, who was forced to release a fireball that self-destructed to cover up its existence in order to prevent the star material from forcing his fleet back.
Taking this opportunity, Astrophage sank into the star again, split its body open again, and soaked its special organs directly in the star material, restoring everything it had lost. However, in the phase space, the insect queen has helped Chen Ming gather more than 500 Hercules-class ships in just a few dozen seconds. They are all uniformly equipped with Chen Ming's optimized new shaped arc launcher. device.
The Zerg fleet locked onto the weakness of the Astrophage through the equipment left behind by the Department of Climate Modification in the normal universe to observe the shallow material of the star.
The next moment.
A thunder dragon-like thunder composed of countless electric arcs penetrated the vacuum, penetrated the shallow material of the star, and bombarded the special organ of the astral phagocytosis that was soaked in the star's material.
The dense network trauma caused by the arc spread from the location where the organ was hit to the surroundings. Although it did not extend further towards its body, the damage caused to this organ alone was enough.
The activity of the star eater was gradually slowing down, and the huge beast quietly fell silent in an instant.
Lost the vitality of life.
Its corpse is also gradually sinking into the star.
But just before it sank completely, Chen Ming's Zerg fleet had grabbed it from phase space and fished it out of the star.
More Zerg tentacles grew on the Zerg warship that grabbed the Astrophage's corpse, puncturing the organs on the corpse that were used to store stellar matter, allowing the stellar matter to return to the star under the pull of gravity.
This is used to return the stellar matter in the corpse.
Chen Ming noticed that compared to the stellar matter it absorbed, there wasn't much left on its body.
However, he also noticed that in the lower abdomen of the columnar body inside the split corpse, there was a place where the "blood vessels" that transported star matter from all the edges of the icosahedron of the head were finally connected.
There is something that is tightly protected and shines brighter than a star.
Judging from its appearance and the material inside it, it is the egg sheath of the Star Eater.
Everything inside is highly compressed stellar material.
Basically all the star material taken away by Astrophag is here, and what is not there is used to maintain the activities of Astrophag.
Chen Ming gave the order to the Zerg warship to tear open the corpse and extract the egg sheath.
Although the Zerg have no way to directly contact them, the Zerg are not only the Zerg, but Chen Ming also provides support.
Chen Ming has many tools that use various means including force fields and magnetic fields to capture egg sheaths from a distance.
However, he had just given the order when Astrophag's body suddenly changed.
As the stellar matter in its body was expelled, its body seemed to begin to melt due to the sudden drop in temperature, melting into an extremely clear, low-viscosity colloid that was colorless, odorless, and almost impossible to directly observe. .
Chen Ming immediately soaked the body again in the star, and barely managed to save the remaining part of the body.
However, in just ten seconds, only the upper half of the Star Eater's body was left.
The lower half, except for the egg sheath, has completely melted into a gelatinous substance.
Fortunately, the Zerg fleet responded quickly and took action before these materials fell into the star, saving most of the materials.
Chen Ming tentatively let the insect queen eat a little.
Of course, no genes were obtained.
This is normal.
Astrophage is obviously not a carbon-based organism. Instead, it may be some kind of hydrogen-based organism, which has no such thing as genes.
Just like the nightmare of the plane should be the product of some kind of negative matter after it has been materialized, it is impossible to obtain what Chen Ming wants directly and conveniently through eating.
But the situation this time is better than that of Nightmare of the Planes.
Because the Queen understands the nature of this substance and its structure, this means that the Queen can try to replicate this substance.
This substance can be named astral body fluid.
An isolation layer structure can be formed under high heat or energy supply conditions.
It is the same as the substance that Chen Ming discovered that has an effect similar to that of a Dyson sphere, but the effect is far weaker than that of a Dyson sphere.
It can be used both to isolate the temperature of the star and to form the astral phagocytosis itself.
The egg sheath that is still well preserved in the lower half of the astral body seems to be able to actively secrete this substance.
Chen Ming probably understood the purpose of Planet Eater coming to this planet.
Just to reproduce.
It first parasitizes in a star, secretes body fluids on the surface of a star, traps the entire star's heat within the star, and then builds a nest inside the star where the astral phagocytosis eggs develop.
This egg sheath is evidence, and it is also the most directly valuable thing on the body of Astrophage.
The most indirect value must be the astral body fluid, a substance that seems to enable the successful creation of a Dyson sphere.
Chen Ming wants to take the egg sheath away for study.
However, he did not make a decision directly, but took a look at the star soaked in the half-drawn corpse of Astrophago.
After Chen Ming's fleet's attack tore away the body fluid film covered by the astral phagocytosis on the surface, this area of the star has temporarily returned to normal.
You can see what a normal-strength star looks like under the astral phagocytic isolation film.
However, the intensity of today's stars is still at least one level lower than what was observed five years ago.
The reason is that this egg sheath has gathered countless high-density stellar materials.
This egg sheath robs the star of its power.
Now there is a choice before Chen Ming.
By studying this egg sheath, he might be able to master the power of Star Eaters and try to breed new Star Eaters.
Returning the material in this egg sheath can make this galaxy and the planet Gaia rejuvenate and completely rejuvenate, rather than using climate recovery technology to barely restore a little bit of its former appearance.
To be honest, it's a bit hard to decide.
The power of the Star Eater is really eye-catching, and Chen Ming is also very interested in the possibility of cultivating new Star Eaters.
But something suddenly flashed in Chen Ming's mind.
He once obtained seeds from the legion, planted and cultivated them himself, and now there is a fairy tree half as tall as a man.
If the fairy tree is planted on the planet Gaia, then maybe... he can also harvest a fairy tree that can cover the sky and the sun like the headquarters of the Psychic Research Institute.
The value of doing this far exceeds cultivating a new Astrophag who doesn't know when it will be used.
And think about it from another angle.
Chen Ming has now mastered a power more powerful than the Devouring Star, but he has not mastered a way to completely restore the Gaia planet to its former glory and regain its vitality.
After thinking about it, Chen Ming felt that he could make a decision.
The only pity is the new Astral Eater.
But since Chen Ming has determined that the astral phagocytosis can reproduce itself, it means that there may be more than one astral phagocytosis in the universe, and he will have the opportunity to encounter it in the future.
Chen Ming decided not to hesitate anymore.
Let the Zerg warship soak the egg sheath in the star first, so as to avoid it from following in the footsteps of half of the Star Eater's corpse.
He couldn't just tear the egg sheath apart and throw it directly into the star.
If the extremely concentrated stellar material is released into the star, it may cause problems for the star.
He needs to do a little research on how to slowly release the concentrated material safely and stably and return it to the star.
This period of time also allows the Department of Climate Change to calculate how the climate change will proceed after the star's material is returned.
When the star returns to its former appearance, climate modification can begin.
"It's over."
Chen Ming breathed a sigh of relief. It was much easier to deal with the Astral Devourer than the Plane Nightmare.
At least the power of Astral Eater itself is not as outrageous as the Nightmare of Planes tearing apart space.
Then, it is time for Chen Ming to continue the series of tasks that he has not completed before.
Whether it is the research project on the body of the Nightmare of the Plane at the headquarters, or the third review of the complete investigation project of the body of the Nightmare of the Plane in Chen Ming's origin galaxy.
Or the current project to study the possibility that this astral phagocytosis and its corpse can be extended to include things like Dyson spheres.
There are also the construction of colonies and the advancement of climate transformation plans.
And the idea he just thought of transplanting the fairy tree to the planet Gaia.
Everything has to be done slowly.
It all takes a while.
Chen Ming quickly went through the upcoming tasks in his mind.
I heard the voice of the Minister of Climate Change coming to my ears: "That...Mr. Chen Ming..."
The minister, who had tried to keep quiet while Chen Ming was working, suddenly said cautiously: "Look over there, is there any movement over the wormhole?"
Chen Ming turned to look at the console. After the death of Astrophage, the wormhole that was still quietly orbiting the same planet as Gaia suddenly seemed to start to tremble.
It seems to be slowly breaking away from the star's gravity and wants to leave the galaxy.
Chen Ming roughly calculated its possible route, and then disappeared directly from the highest point observing the battlefield that had just erupted near the star.
A set of biological armor instantly appeared on his body, and he also appeared near the wormhole.
(End of chapter)