Wizards: Starting as a Potions Master!

Chapter 373 The Swarm, Completing Seven Ascensions!

As soon as Jinx drank the Sunwell potion, her body began to undergo tremendous changes. A large, simplified red sun cloud pattern appeared on the carapace of Jinx's back, and at the same time, the cloud pattern lit up, and a vast amount of solar energy gathered towards her.

The entire Hive Tower began to wriggle and upgrade. The Hive Will automatically turned the Black Hole Queen into a floating magic pool, and then the Hive Tower began to upgrade towards the second ring Hive Tower.

The underground world, which normally has no sun and only faintly glowing plants, is now radiating light along with Jinx's glow, causing the Rye Underground to light up.

At that moment, all the insect swarms seemed to be burning in flames.

Meanwhile, the temperature in the rye underground area also began to rise.

It's developing from the twenties to the thirties.

Upon seeing this, Su Nan immediately understood that the will of the insect hive was evolving towards the level of a second-ring wizard.

The mark of a second-circle wizard is the ability to use immense magic to alter their surroundings to the greatest extent possible.

Therefore, as the insect hive's will progressed towards the seventh ascension, it actually began to raise the temperature of the underground rye domain.

Now, the entire Arcane Swarm is being burned by the sun's flames, and swarm members are dying one after another.

The Hive's will itself was also being burned by the sun's flames.

The swarm had taken a path rarely trodden before: the route of collective evolution. But now, lacking sufficiently strong individual souls, the swarm began to collapse as it digested the potion.

At the same time, the swarm began to devour everything in sight, eating soil, rocks, and mineral veins, and using this to hatch new individuals, increasing the swarm's numbers.

To counteract this, one must take a magic potion and, under Su Nan's magic, gain a deeper connection with the sun, and then consider the consequences.

A blazing sun seemed to descend upon the swarm of insects.

The place where the blazing sun set transformed into a site where solar flames erupted. From it, flames continuously spewed forth.

Su Nan frowned. "The evolution of the Zerg swarm isn't looking good. Ultimately, the biggest weakness of the Zerg swarm is that although there are many individuals, they lack sufficiently strong souls."

"Hive consciousness is a collective consciousness; it lacks the individual soul defense layer."

Jinx let out a painful howl. At that moment, a huge ball of blazing fire enveloped her, seemingly about to burn her into a sea of ​​flames.

Jinx and the Hive's consciousness spoke simultaneously: "Master, there's a problem with the digestive potion..."

"The swarm is in crisis."

Su Nan frowned and quickly brainstormed solutions with the AI. They immediately came up with five options and selected the two best ones.

Su Nan decided to leave the choice to the will of the Hive and Jinx herself, and said, "Currently, I have come up with two solutions."

"One method is to pile the resources of the swarm onto a single insect, thus creating an insect capable of supporting a second-level combat force."

Jinx, or rather the will of the Hive, immediately rejected the plan after careful consideration. "Great Master, the Swarm doesn't need extremely powerful individuals. That way, Jinx and I would survive, but the Swarm would perish."

"A swarm needs quantity, not quality. Otherwise, it will no longer be a swarm."

"Our essence is..."

Because the swarm has already digested one-third of the Sunwell potion, it has acquired the second-level trait.

The Hive's will summoned a portion of the Secret Realm, which merged with the Prime Material Plane. Then, with the Hive Tower as its core, it appeared in the Secret Realm. Within the Secret Realm, the essence of the swarm is a brain composed of millions of light points.

Seeing this, Su Nan began to ponder. "Has the swarm begun to gradually abandon its predatory nature and move towards a larger, collective consciousness? Is it on the path of..."

"The very nature of devouring will inevitably lead to self-destruction sooner or later."

This is the right direction for evolution.

Su Nan said to Jinx and the Will of the Hive, "Then we can only use the second option. Let me first tell you about my third option. My third option is to prepare magic to neutralize some of the effects of the Sunwell potion on you, thereby reducing your tolerance for the potion."

Jinx tensed up. For the Zerg swarm, this was the least desirable method. But the Zerg swarm's primary goal was survival, so if Su Nan, as the leader of the Zerg, wanted to adopt this plan...

The will of the hive will not refuse.

Jinx, now a ball of flame, pleaded with Su Nan, "Master, is there any other way?"

Su Nan said, "I know you'll be unwilling to accept this, and I'm unwilling to accept it either. So there's a second option, but it requires taking risks."

Jinx immediately replied, "The Zerg are never afraid of taking risks."

Su Nan said, "Then let's continue to expand along the path of collective evolution. The reason why you can't withstand the potion's effects from the Sunwell right now is mainly because I've linked the swarm too closely to the sun. Once you can digest it all, you'll practically be considered children of the sun."

"Now, you must continue to multiply the swarm, making the entire Rye Underground a part of the swarm, not just the scarabs and other insects, but all swarm structures as well."

"Take the entire Rye Underground Realm and essentially turn it into a giant worm, establish a swarm ecosystem, and let this ecosystem bear the Sunwell potion."

Su Nan transmitted the five construction methods of the swarm architecture, which the AI ​​had deduced, to the will of the swarm through the wolf pack effect.

These five types of swarm buildings are, respectively, optimized by the AI, and are five variants of the second-ring swarm tower based on the second-ring wizard tower [second-ring swarm tower].

Anyway, the swarm still has thirty Black Hole Queens in reserve, which can come in handy at this time.

Without any hesitation, the Hive Will began a frenzied mass production of units and expansion of the swarm's structures. The six types of second-tier Hive Towers also began to be built amidst the combined efforts of millions of Zerg.

First, there is the first variant of the insect hive tower—the two-ring carpet tower, which is an insect hive tower covered with fungal tumors. Fungal tumors constantly fall from the tower, and the cannon fodder scarabs push those fungal tumors to the rye underground domain, covering the underground domain with carpet.

The second variant of the Hive Tower—the Second Ring Queen Tower—is a rebirth tower that allows the Queens to use arcane regeneration.

The third variant of the insect nest tower is the tower of the two-ringed flying insect.

The fourth variant of the insect hive tower—the second-ring tyrant tower.

The fifth variant of the insect nest tower—the second-ring hatching tower.

The Flying Insect Tower, besides having the basic shape of an insect hive tower, also features numerous bone spikes and wings, a result of the bone spike cruiser insects gaining the ability to fly after a high degree of evolution.

The Bone Spike Cruiser Bugs have all evolved into a shape resembling a flying snake, and their attack method has changed from the original massive bone spikes to something resembling flying needles.

Arcane Needles contain powerful arcane energy and fall from the sky in an instant to attack enemies, possessing the characteristics of a first-level arcane magic.

The Tyrant Tower is the building that spawns Tyrant Zerg, while the Hatchery Tower is the Zerg hive building that spawns a large number of low-level cannon fodder units.

A day later, the five second-ring wizard towers were successfully built, and most of the Rye Underground Domain was covered with creep, insect swarms, and insect structures.

The second-ring Zerg hive tower where Jinx resides has also become much larger.

Meanwhile, the swarm also exhausted thirty Black Hole Queens before finally completing the construction of these six second-ring wizard towers.

These six second-ring wizard towers are interconnected, turning the entire Rye Underground Domain into a swarm of insects.

With the six second-ring wizard towers, the Zerg swarm, which was originally a disorganized mess, now has a backbone. Or rather, the six second-ring wizard towers plus the Zerg swarm are essentially the embodiment of that second-ring wizard.

Seeing that Jinx's condition and the Zerg swarm's condition were gradually stabilizing, Su Nan knew that his plan had succeeded and the Zerg swarm had completed its seventh evolution!

Jinx thanked Sunan, who nodded and then turned and left the Rye Underground.

However, after this incident, the temperature in the underground rye area has risen by at least ten degrees, and is now over thirty degrees.

The evolved Arcane Swarm can now achieve a second-circle combat power simply by updating its arcane magic. At the same time, the core units of the swarm have become high-speed cruising flying insects and arcane tyrants.

All the queens of the swarm automatically transformed into first-ring beings the moment the hive consciousness became a second-ring being.

However, the Swarm lacks second-level arcane magic, so they can only rely on Su Nan to study the arcane magic system in his spare time, or for the Swarm to spend time figuring it out on their own.

However, the swarm immediately had a new target: the new underground domain they had discovered earlier!

The Path of Seal is a one-way seal, so the arcane races in that middle underground realm cannot get out, but the swarm can easily enter.

After obtaining Su Nan's consent, the Hive's Will prepared to proactively send out a swarm of insectoid troops to "explore" that world and acquire knowledge of second-circle arcane magic.

(End of this chapter)