SERVER NOTICE

The Devourer Hivelord is victorious!

The planet [Dust Hive] is now under the control of the scourge

of the galaxy.

May the benevolent beings hidden in the Void have mercy.

Logan wasn’t sure what to make of the note at the end of the notice, but he was happy to know that he had succeeded. The other players in the room cheered, and his friends joined in. It was interesting to see all of them, dressed in the same armor as he was in, moving around and celebrating after all they had been through.

Something he hadn’t expected though, was the next notice that popped up.

SERVER NOTICE

With the reemergence of the Devourer species, and the amount of players wearing the armor set earned from them, players now have the option of allowing themselves to become Devourer Mutants instead of Human.

This change will be permanent, and will result in a variety of changes that will be described when the option is selected, but before it has been confirmed.

Hope that others have more sense than we fear.

It looked like the others saw that notice, as a lot of the cheering died down. It was something that hadn’t been found in the entire time the game had been active; a way to change what species you were. Every player began the game as a human, and there wasn’t a way to change it, even after others had encountered a few of the other alien civilizations throughout the stars. That was before the Free States militia had taken over and bottlenecked the starting region.

To be a devourer, though, would likely present a bunch of problems, especially if they were considered to be a scourge. Logan figured that the feelings that came through sometimes about conquering the entire galaxy were part of that, but he had been doing a pretty good job of keeping his eyes on the prize. Hopefully, now that he had his prize, he could find something else to focus on other than dominating everyone.

There was also the idea of whether or not they would be independent, or become part of his brood. He hoped that they wouldn’t have to be stuck to him, because then he’d be just as bad as the militia was. Maybe they had a choice, but until someone took the leap, those would be questions left unanswered.

Logan decided to address the people in the room, to make sure that they understood his position on the whole matter. He didn’t want to make them feel like they had to choose based on what they thought he wanted.

“That’s an interesting option that’s opened up. Please, take some time to figure out what you want to do, because the other species in the wide galaxy likely won’t take well to anyone who is a devourer mutant. I’m going to see if there’s something else I can be doing to solidify our hold here, if you guys wanted to log off and rest, or hang out and take advantage of whatever the facilities the city has left over.”

A few of the rebels logged off, and the rest decided to leave the building. His friends stuck around, likely hoping to get to talk a bit more now that there wasn’t much pressure on them. Of course, that’s when the system decided to interject itself into Logan’s vision, and present him with a new quest.

Capture or Destroy Outlying Broods: 0/3

There are queens who do not recognize you as the true Hivelord.

Force them to bow to your power, or remove them from your path.

There can be only one.

“Sorry guys, it looks like we’re not done quite yet.” Logan said. “I’d be happy to talk and walk, but there are some queens that need to be brought to heel, apparently.”

Pat clapped and jumped up and down. “Something other than fighting in the cramped city, waiting for the enemies to come to us! Let’s get back out there and fight some more bugs!” The other two seemed to agree. Getting back into their old groove would probably help them all, especially now that they weren’t being hunted at the moment. Logan didn’t want to bring any of his brood with him, so he gave the queens instructions to follow while he was gone.

He left his extra queen eggs with Mouse, since any one of his queens could spawn more of them, so long as they had the right materials. Normally, the Hivelord had to take the time to craft a new egg from the raw goo and spawning pool fluid, but Logan didn’t know how to do that yet. Thankfully, he had a few extra, so maybe one of the queens would be able to teach him.

That was a problem for later, though, as they needed to go and fight some other queens who needed to be taught a lesson.

—

Logan and his party were in their ships, all of them the starter B-Safe brand ship, flying to the marker that he had on his visor from the quest interface. It was about ten kilometers away from the city, but that wasn’t very far compared to how fast their ships could go. They decided to stay in the atmosphere, to be able to enjoy flying again without the fear of being shot down.

The planet was still a barren wasteland, but it was theirs now. It had very little to look at overall, but sometimes there was a beauty to simplicity. That, or they were all just forgetting what the color green looked like. There were a few ponds and lakes dotted around, but they weren’t a clear blue like Logan would have hoped, being stained a weird red-brown from the dust and clay in the dirt. Maybe he could find a way to terraform the planet, and teach his brood to leave some forms of life alone.

There was a chance, however slim, that he might be able to reprogram the whole brood to allow for diplomacy. That was his new overall goal, but it would take quite a while to be able to get there, and he recognized that it was going to be a hard road to walk.

They stayed in a pretty loose formation as they flew, chatting over the comms about random things in their lives. Logan didn’t have much to contribute to any of the recent events, and the others either didn’t notice or were kind enough to not pry into what his life looked like currently. He told them that he was unemployed currently, which he had said before, and that he used to work in retail. His family was all dead, and due to some unfortunate circumstances, he didn’t have many friends in his city.

After a brief lull in the conversation, Jones started to drone on and on about the changes that he had made to their gear, making sure that they were either more powerful without sacrificing too much in other areas, or more efficient without losing too much power.

The only real challenge for him was the Bird of Prey handgun he had given to Meghan. It was a higher rarity than the rest of their gear, so the pieces were more intricate. He felt like a watchmaker, with all of the tiny and delicate pieces that the weapon had inside of it. Logan could feel through the radio that the girls’ eyes were glazing over, even though they were in completely separate ships and flying behind him, but he kept his attention on the details, hoping that would give him some insight on working on more complicated equipment.

They arrived at a cave that had a small stream of water leading into it from a pond nearby. It wasn’t the main way that water left the pond, but there was enough that Logan was impressed it hadn’t flooded already.

They landed near the bank of the pond, two dozen meters from the entrance, leaving their ships with all of their weapons drawn. It was time to get things moving.