Zerg? Spawning pool? From the game Starcraft? As a teenager who loved video games, Athena has been a fan of Starcraft for years. She might be one of the few female players of Starcraft. She was never good at it, but the game mechanics and the lore had always fascinated her. Starcraft was one of the many reasons she did terribly in high school. Did she have regrets? Sure. Did she often find herself going back to the game and playing a few rounds on the ladder? Absolutely.
What Athena didn't understand was how she just heard the voice in her head. Was she insane? Was she having hallucinations? It wouldn’t be the craziest thing she has seen today. Then again, what if this was real? If she did have some powers regarding Starcraft, her life in this cruel universe might not be so miserable after all.
“Hello?” She asked carefully.
“Hi.” A voice replied politely.
Athena jumped a little before realizing this voice was different. It was no longer the cold, mechanical voice that first spoke to her. Instead, this was the voice of a young woman that sounded…oddly familiar. Athena knew she had heard the voice before, but she couldn’t tell from where.
“Ummm…mind letting me know who I am talking to?”
“That would be me.” The female voice replied in Athena’s head once again. When Athena looked around and tried to find the source of the voice, the female voice sounded almost annoyed. “Say Open Starcraft System.”
“I’m sorry…what?”
“Open Starcraft System. Say it.”
“What would happen if I said it?”
“...” The female voice paused, speechless. “I will explain. Just say the words first.”
Athena thought about it for a second. This didn't feel like a trap. Was there anything about her worth someone setting up a trap for.
“Open Starcraft System?” She finally said.
The next second, Athena found herself staring at a giant computer screen displaying a game of Starcraft with her as an active player. In the middle of the map were a terran command center, a zerg hatchery, and a protoss nexus. Each base was surrounded by 12 workers of each race. 12 SCVs. 12 probes. 12 drones. Judging from the color of the structures and units from the three races, they were all under Athena’s command.
On the left side of the computer screen was the portrait of a woman with long silver hair. These portraits were usually only shown during campaigns and co-op missions when certain non-player characters had things to say. As she saw the woman, Athena finally realized why the female voice sounded so familiar. It was the voice of Nova Terra, a famous ghost character in the Starcraft 2 storyline.
As Athena finally saw her, Nova raised her eyebrows and grinned. She almost seemed intrigued by Athena’s reaction. “Surprised?”
“You know…I should be a lot more surprised than I am, but I suppose a person can only be shocked so many times in a day.” Athena said quietly. If this was happening to her when she was back home, she would start looking up psychologists in the nearby areas already, but after being teleported seven hundred years into the future and inheriting the body and memories of another person, she has used up all the shocked reactions for the day.
“So, you’re…Nova?”
“Not quite. Let me explain.”
Nova leaned forward in the portrait. She started talking, and Athena listened carefully.
“Let me introduce myself first. You know how in games, different races have different advisors to help them with managing the gameplay? Terran have adjutants. Zerg have queens. Protoss have executors. Well, I am going to be your advisor in this…let’s call it a game. It is my job to help you navigate this whole system and answer whatever questions you may have.”
“I can take any voice and form in the game that you prefer. I just thought you would react better to this voice.” Nova chuckled. “After all, this is your favorite announcer in the game.”
“I bought the bundle for the unit skin and co-op commander. The announcer really wasn’t my priority…” Athena couldn’t help but interrupt. “Not important. Carry on please.”
“As you wish, commander.” Nova continued. “The game you are looking at is mostly what you expect. You will need to collect minerals and vespene gas to build structures, which will then allow you to unlock units and research technologies.”
“However, any unit you build can be taken out of the game into real life. If you spawn a pair of zerglings in the game, you can summon them into the world around you, and they will still obey your every command. Structures built in the game itself cannot be taken out, even terran structures, but the workers of different races can be summoned and then construct buildings in your own world. These buildings retain the same functions. They can train units, do research, collect resources…and so on.”
“As you have probably noticed by now, there are no mineral clusters or vespene geysers on the map. You need to collect these resources in your world. Let’s start with vespene gas first because it’s the most straightforward. You can collect vespene gas whenever a life is terminated within 500 meters of you or any of your units. This distance increases the larger your units are. The exact amount of vespene gas you get depends on the type of life ended. The death of a human being generates 25 units of vespene gas.”
“Collecting minerals is a little more complicated. You will need to use your workers to collect resources and return them back to the respective bases. For now, you will be able to manually bring the workers in and out of the game to return resources, but eventually, I would suggest you construct bases in your world to increase efficiency.”
“Unlike in normal games, the workers of the three races collect different types of resources. Drones will collect biomass such as the bodies of the two animals you just killed. Probes and SCVs both harvest and return minerals, but the types of minerals they can harvest are different. Some minerals can be harvested by one but not the other. Ultimately, regardless of where they came from, these resources all become mineral units that you can spend on any of the three races.”
Athena nodded as she processed all the information Nova was giving her. Minerals shouldn’t be too much of a problem, and given all the wildlife on the planet, neither would vespene gas. So what was preventing her from just spamming an army of battlecruisers and taking over the galaxy?
A part of her was starting to fantasize what would happen if she built herself the entire protoss Golden Armada. Motherships. Carriers. Void Rays. Tempests. The Venya Imperium? The United Republic of Dorn? The Salin Empire? All would bow under the might of the protoss!
“One more thing.” Nova quickly crushed Athena’s dreams. “Well, a few more things. First, don’t expect the cost of all the units to be the same as before. A battlecruiser won’t cost as much as a dozen marines. It will cost as much as hundreds of thousands of marines. So will units like thors and colossi. I’m sure you understand why.”
Well, there goes my plan of quick galactic domination. Athena sighed and nodded, a little disappointed. In games, units were designed for balance and not lore-accuracy. Fifteen marines could gun down a 700 meter long capital ship that was the battlecruiser. That was clearly not going to be the case here, and the cost of different units had to go up to properly reflect the strength of the units in lore.
“Also, you will not be able to unlock additional structures just by having the structures earlier in the tech tree built. You will need to unlock these structures by yourself before you can build them. Right now, in terms of structures, you can only build the bases of the three races and the zerg spawning pool. With units, you can only build the workers and the zerg overlord, which doesn’t require any additional structure. You will need to build a spawning pool to build zerglings and queens.”
“Zerg structures, as you have just seen, are unlocked when you get access to biological samples. Protoss structures are unlocked when you get access to individuals or constructs with psychic abilities. Terran structures are unlocked when you get access to human technologies.”
“In all cases, it is possible that multiple samples or technologies are needed to unlock a related structure. For simpler structures, you being in close proximity to the samples is enough for the samples to be automatically collected. For more complicated samples and technologies, you will need to have your workers perform extensive examinations over the subjects.”
Now this made Athena wince a little. This meant she could hide in a corner of this planet and collect all the resources, but she would still not be able to build any advanced combat unit. Sure…maybe she would be able to unlock more zerg units and build up a zerg army, but how could she get off this planet? By riding a mutalisk? Or maybe she could crawl inside an overlord and hope it could slowly drift to a colonized human world before she ran out of food?
“Psychic abilities? I have never seen that before.” Athena asked. Biological samples and human technologies made sense, but psychic abilities? The old Athena never heard of that before in her entire life.
“They may exist in this world. If not, then protoss structures and units may be impossible to unlock.” Nova simply stated. “Apologies. I am simply a presenter of the rules. I don’t make them. May I continue?”
Athena nodded once again.
“You can store units in the game, but there is a limit. Only 200 supplies of units from each race can be stored in the game. Also, structure construction, unit production and upgrade research are completed instantly in the game. In your world, they take quite the time. Only units that stay in the real world for extensive periods of time will need supply depots, pylons, or overlords in their remote proximity.”
Well, this broke Athena’s dream of carrying around a full army with her and unleashing them with the snap of a finger. The supplies of larger machines of war have no doubt increased significantly. A few hundred infantry from the three races was good to have, but they were only bodyguards, not armies.
This concluded Nova’s lessons about the basics of this game. They weren’t hard to understand, and Athena was glad for the information. However, she realized Nova didn't tell her anything about how she got this so-called Starcraft System. Or how she ended up in this world. She doubted the two were unrelated.
When she asked Nova, the advisor simply shrugged.
“Once again, my apologies, commander. I am not aware of the answers to these questions. All I know is I, and this system, are created to help you achieve whichever goal you wish to achieve. We are, and will always be, at your service.”
Athena winced. This answer didn't satisfy her curiosity, but she knew she wasn’t getting more out of Nova. Whether Nova was telling the truth or not, the Starcraft System gave her a way to protect herself in this dangerous new world. Regardless of why she got this system, she was at least grateful for that.
She looked at the resource tab on the top of the screen.
Mineral: 0
Vespene gas: 60
With a single thought, before Athena even did anything physically, all 12 drones suddenly disappeared from the game screen and appeared right beside Athena in the forest. The transformation caught Athena a little by surprise. She also noticed that, on the timer in her power armor, barely a minute had gone by since she last checked it, which was after she killed the two Morgo - 23 instances.
“What…how long were we talking?”
“Time in your world is paused when you are in the game. It only resumes after you leave the game.”
“And…how does that work?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Nova replied quietly.
Athena raised her eyebrows and moved onto things that were relevant to her in the short term. She turned her attention to the drones.
Drones were the workers of the zerg. They were capable of breaking down their own genetic sequences and morphing into any zerg structure, from the critical hatcheries to the deadly spine and spore crawlers.
Despite being non combatants, the drones hovered over two meters tall. Their claws, usually used to cut down mineral clusters or slice into biomass, made Athena wince a little. She doubted even soldiers in Guardian-class power armors could fare too well against these giant claws. It was similar to how chainsaws worked. Chainsaws were usually designed to cut down trees, but that didn't mean they couldn’t saw through a person’s flesh and bones if the need arose.
Each drone cost 50 minerals and 0 vespene gas.
Under her silent command, the drones hovered in the air and propelled their way to the two corpses on the ground. Once there, they dug their claws into the flesh of the corpses before returning to Athena with the largest pieces of biomass they could carry. Athena sent them back into the game, where they returned the biomass to the hatchery.
Within a minute, the drones dissected both bodies and returned them to the hatchery. Their efficiency was truly impressive. As they were working, a few more predators were attracted to Athena’s location by the smell of freshly killed prey. Needless to say, they didn't fare too well.
When a trio of predators designed Morgo - 14, known for their size and ferocity, appeared, Athena was a little worried. She even considered summoning the protoss probes and terran SCVs from the game to help with the fighting. Drones were just workers, after all. In a standard Starcraft game, pulling the drones to fight was usually soon followed by typing ‘GG’ into the chat.
That was until the drones, ordered by her to attack, surrounded the trio of predators and started dissecting them when they were still alive. It turned out cutting open dead bodies was quite similar to cutting open living animals.
The predators tried to fight back, but the drones completely outnumbered them. Before being turned into fresh biomass to harvest, the predators injured three of the drones.
The damage looked serious, but for zerg units, as long as they survived, recovering was just a matter of time. By the time the healthy drones returned all the remains of the new kills back to the hatchery, the three injured drones had regenerated back to full health.
As time went on, it turned out that the trio of Morgo - 14 instances weren’t the only animals in the jungle with good senses. Athena barely cleaned up the remains of the trio before another predator found its way to Athena.
And so the slaughter continued.
Zerg? Spawning pool? From the game Starcraft? As a teenager who loved video games, Athena has been a fan of Starcraft for years. She might be one of the few female players of Starcraft. She was never good at it, but the game mechanics and the lore had always fascinated her. Starcraft was one of the many reasons she did terribly in high school. Did she have regrets? Sure. Did she often find herself going back to the game and playing a few rounds on the ladder? Absolutely.
What Athena didn't understand was how she just heard the voice in her head. Was she insane? Was she having hallucinations? It wouldn’t be the craziest thing she has seen today. Then again, what if this was real? If she did have some powers regarding Starcraft, her life in this cruel universe might not be so miserable after all.
“Hello?” She asked carefully.
“Hi.” A voice replied politely.
Athena jumped a little before realizing this voice was different. It was no longer the cold, mechanical voice that first spoke to her. Instead, this was the voice of a young woman that sounded…oddly familiar. Athena knew she had heard the voice before, but she couldn’t tell from where.
“Ummm…mind letting me know who I am talking to?”
“That would be me.” The female voice replied in Athena’s head once again. When Athena looked around and tried to find the source of the voice, the female voice sounded almost annoyed. “Say Open Starcraft System.”
“I’m sorry…what?”
“Open Starcraft System. Say it.”
“What would happen if I said it?”
“...” The female voice paused, speechless. “I will explain. Just say the words first.”
Athena thought about it for a second. This didn't feel like a trap. Was there anything about her worth someone setting up a trap for.
“Open Starcraft System?” She finally said.
The next second, Athena found herself staring at a giant computer screen displaying a game of Starcraft with her as an active player. In the middle of the map were a terran command center, a zerg hatchery, and a protoss nexus. Each base was surrounded by 12 workers of each race. 12 SCVs. 12 probes. 12 drones. Judging from the color of the structures and units from the three races, they were all under Athena’s command.
On the left side of the computer screen was the portrait of a woman with long silver hair. These portraits were usually only shown during campaigns and co-op missions when certain non-player characters had things to say. As she saw the woman, Athena finally realized why the female voice sounded so familiar. It was the voice of Nova Terra, a famous ghost character in the Starcraft 2 storyline.
As Athena finally saw her, Nova raised her eyebrows and grinned. She almost seemed intrigued by Athena’s reaction. “Surprised?”
“You know…I should be a lot more surprised than I am, but I suppose a person can only be shocked so many times in a day.” Athena said quietly. If this was happening to her when she was back home, she would start looking up psychologists in the nearby areas already, but after being teleported seven hundred years into the future and inheriting the body and memories of another person, she has used up all the shocked reactions for the day.
“So, you’re…Nova?”
“Not quite. Let me explain.”
Nova leaned forward in the portrait. She started talking, and Athena listened carefully.
“Let me introduce myself first. You know how in games, different races have different advisors to help them with managing the gameplay? Terran have adjutants. Zerg have queens. Protoss have executors. Well, I am going to be your advisor in this…let’s call it a game. It is my job to help you navigate this whole system and answer whatever questions you may have.”
“I can take any voice and form in the game that you prefer. I just thought you would react better to this voice.” Nova chuckled. “After all, this is your favorite announcer in the game.”
“I bought the bundle for the unit skin and co-op commander. The announcer really wasn’t my priority…” Athena couldn’t help but interrupt. “Not important. Carry on please.”
“As you wish, commander.” Nova continued. “The game you are looking at is mostly what you expect. You will need to collect minerals and vespene gas to build structures, which will then allow you to unlock units and research technologies.”
“However, any unit you build can be taken out of the game into real life. If you spawn a pair of zerglings in the game, you can summon them into the world around you, and they will still obey your every command. Structures built in the game itself cannot be taken out, even terran structures, but the workers of different races can be summoned and then construct buildings in your own world. These buildings retain the same functions. They can train units, do research, collect resources…and so on.”
“As you have probably noticed by now, there are no mineral clusters or vespene geysers on the map. You need to collect these resources in your world. Let’s start with vespene gas first because it’s the most straightforward. You can collect vespene gas whenever a life is terminated within 500 meters of you or any of your units. This distance increases the larger your units are. The exact amount of vespene gas you get depends on the type of life ended. The death of a human being generates 25 units of vespene gas.”
“Collecting minerals is a little more complicated. You will need to use your workers to collect resources and return them back to the respective bases. For now, you will be able to manually bring the workers in and out of the game to return resources, but eventually, I would suggest you construct bases in your world to increase efficiency.”
“Unlike in normal games, the workers of the three races collect different types of resources. Drones will collect biomass such as the bodies of the two animals you just killed. Probes and SCVs both harvest and return minerals, but the types of minerals they can harvest are different. Some minerals can be harvested by one but not the other. Ultimately, regardless of where they came from, these resources all become mineral units that you can spend on any of the three races.”
Athena nodded as she processed all the information Nova was giving her. Minerals shouldn’t be too much of a problem, and given all the wildlife on the planet, neither would vespene gas. So what was preventing her from just spamming an army of battlecruisers and taking over the galaxy?
A part of her was starting to fantasize what would happen if she built herself the entire protoss Golden Armada. Motherships. Carriers. Void Rays. Tempests. The Venya Imperium? The United Republic of Dorn? The Salin Empire? All would bow under the might of the protoss!
“One more thing.” Nova quickly crushed Athena’s dreams. “Well, a few more things. First, don’t expect the cost of all the units to be the same as before. A battlecruiser won’t cost as much as a dozen marines. It will cost as much as hundreds of thousands of marines. So will units like thors and colossi. I’m sure you understand why.”
Well, there goes my plan of quick galactic domination. Athena sighed and nodded, a little disappointed. In games, units were designed for balance and not lore-accuracy. Fifteen marines could gun down a 700 meter long capital ship that was the battlecruiser. That was clearly not going to be the case here, and the cost of different units had to go up to properly reflect the strength of the units in lore.
“Also, you will not be able to unlock additional structures just by having the structures earlier in the tech tree built. You will need to unlock these structures by yourself before you can build them. Right now, in terms of structures, you can only build the bases of the three races and the zerg spawning pool. With units, you can only build the workers and the zerg overlord, which doesn’t require any additional structure. You will need to build a spawning pool to build zerglings and queens.”
“Zerg structures, as you have just seen, are unlocked when you get access to biological samples. Protoss structures are unlocked when you get access to individuals or constructs with psychic abilities. Terran structures are unlocked when you get access to human technologies.”
“In all cases, it is possible that multiple samples or technologies are needed to unlock a related structure. For simpler structures, you being in close proximity to the samples is enough for the samples to be automatically collected. For more complicated samples and technologies, you will need to have your workers perform extensive examinations over the subjects.”
Now this made Athena wince a little. This meant she could hide in a corner of this planet and collect all the resources, but she would still not be able to build any advanced combat unit. Sure…maybe she would be able to unlock more zerg units and build up a zerg army, but how could she get off this planet? By riding a mutalisk? Or maybe she could crawl inside an overlord and hope it could slowly drift to a colonized human world before she ran out of food?
“Psychic abilities? I have never seen that before.” Athena asked. Biological samples and human technologies made sense, but psychic abilities? The old Athena never heard of that before in her entire life.
“They may exist in this world. If not, then protoss structures and units may be impossible to unlock.” Nova simply stated. “Apologies. I am simply a presenter of the rules. I don’t make them. May I continue?”
Athena nodded once again.
“You can store units in the game, but there is a limit. Only 200 supplies of units from each race can be stored in the game. Also, structure construction, unit production and upgrade research are completed instantly in the game. In your world, they take quite the time. Only units that stay in the real world for extensive periods of time will need supply depots, pylons, or overlords in their remote proximity.”
Well, this broke Athena’s dream of carrying around a full army with her and unleashing them with the snap of a finger. The supplies of larger machines of war have no doubt increased significantly. A few hundred infantry from the three races was good to have, but they were only bodyguards, not armies.
This concluded Nova’s lessons about the basics of this game. They weren’t hard to understand, and Athena was glad for the information. However, she realized Nova didn't tell her anything about how she got this so-called Starcraft System. Or how she ended up in this world. She doubted the two were unrelated.
When she asked Nova, the advisor simply shrugged.
“Once again, my apologies, commander. I am not aware of the answers to these questions. All I know is I, and this system, are created to help you achieve whichever goal you wish to achieve. We are, and will always be, at your service.”
Athena winced. This answer didn't satisfy her curiosity, but she knew she wasn’t getting more out of Nova. Whether Nova was telling the truth or not, the Starcraft System gave her a way to protect herself in this dangerous new world. Regardless of why she got this system, she was at least grateful for that.
She looked at the resource tab on the top of the screen.
Mineral: 0
Vespene gas: 60
With a single thought, before Athena even did anything physically, all 12 drones suddenly disappeared from the game screen and appeared right beside Athena in the forest. The transformation caught Athena a little by surprise. She also noticed that, on the timer in her power armor, barely a minute had gone by since she last checked it, which was after she killed the two Morgo - 23 instances.
“What…how long were we talking?”
“Time in your world is paused when you are in the game. It only resumes after you leave the game.”
“And…how does that work?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Nova replied quietly.
Athena raised her eyebrows and moved onto things that were relevant to her in the short term. She turned her attention to the drones.
Drones were the workers of the zerg. They were capable of breaking down their own genetic sequences and morphing into any zerg structure, from the critical hatcheries to the deadly spine and spore crawlers.
Despite being non combatants, the drones hovered over two meters tall. Their claws, usually used to cut down mineral clusters or slice into biomass, made Athena wince a little. She doubted even soldiers in Guardian-class power armors could fare too well against these giant claws. It was similar to how chainsaws worked. Chainsaws were usually designed to cut down trees, but that didn't mean they couldn’t saw through a person’s flesh and bones if the need arose.
Each drone cost 50 minerals and 0 vespene gas.
Under her silent command, the drones hovered in the air and propelled their way to the two corpses on the ground. Once there, they dug their claws into the flesh of the corpses before returning to Athena with the largest pieces of biomass they could carry. Athena sent them back into the game, where they returned the biomass to the hatchery.
Within a minute, the drones dissected both bodies and returned them to the hatchery. Their efficiency was truly impressive. As they were working, a few more predators were attracted to Athena’s location by the smell of freshly killed prey. Needless to say, they didn't fare too well.
When a trio of predators designed Morgo - 14, known for their size and ferocity, appeared, Athena was a little worried. She even considered summoning the protoss probes and terran SCVs from the game to help with the fighting. Drones were just workers, after all. In a standard Starcraft game, pulling the drones to fight was usually soon followed by typing ‘GG’ into the chat.
That was until the drones, ordered by her to attack, surrounded the trio of predators and started dissecting them when they were still alive. It turned out cutting open dead bodies was quite similar to cutting open living animals.
The predators tried to fight back, but the drones completely outnumbered them. Before being turned into fresh biomass to harvest, the predators injured three of the drones.
The damage looked serious, but for zerg units, as long as they survived, recovering was just a matter of time. By the time the healthy drones returned all the remains of the new kills back to the hatchery, the three injured drones had regenerated back to full health.
As time went on, it turned out that the trio of Morgo - 14 instances weren’t the only animals in the jungle with good senses. Athena barely cleaned up the remains of the trio before another predator found its way to Athena.
And so the slaughter continued.
