SSS rank Mother-In-Law to an Invincible Family-Chapter 450: The Special Newborn

But while the humans hid and watched the zerg like owls.

The Zerg were busy searching around as if they had never thought about there being anyone other than them in this space.

This is because the Zerg didn't operate like humans.

They didn't rely on complex maps or spoken orders. Their coordination came from instinct, shared memory, and hive resonance—an ancient link passed through blood, brain tissue, and the Queen's will.

Inside the outer sectors of the silent void, a large Zerg command vessel hovered slowly above a dead star.

Its shape resembled a twisted shell, pulsing faintly with green and black energy. From a distance, it looked like a natural organism—more like something that had grown rather than been built.

Deep within its core chamber, a dozen Zerg processors—each a different variant of the species—floated in a cold pool of nutrient-rich fluid.

Above them sat a tall figure, her carapace shaped like a throne. Long tendrils drifted behind her, twitching softly with thought.

She was not the Queen.

But she was close to her.

And right now, she was waiting.

One of the smaller processors blinked and clicked its mandibles.

"Still no echo from Vanguard-7," it said through layered clicks and pulses.

Another processor turned, releasing a low vibration. "Pinged them again?"

"Twenty-four times. No trace. No reply. No residual signal trail."

"They were supposed to stay in passive scan mode," another added. "No engagement. Just orbit and report."

"Then why silence?" the tendril queen asked, her voice slow and low, like sap running from bark.

"Unknown."

She tilted her head.

Inside Vanguard-7, they had sent something new—something precious.

A newborn.

It wasn't like the others. This one had hatched with a rare spine pattern along its back and a crystal node inside its skull that reacted to long-range signals. They had named it Nu'raak.

The Queen herself had approved the test.

"Let it grow," she had said. "Let it feel the void. See how far its echo can stretch."

So they did.

They placed Nu'raak inside Vanguard-7 with a stable escort of drones and simple observers.

Nothing armed. Nothing aggressive. The goal was to float along the edge of unknown space, learn, and report back through Nu'raak's pulses.

At first, everything went well.

Nu'raak's signal echoed further than any newborn they had seen. It reached back through two small sectors—untethered and pure.

But then… the signal flickered.

It didn't stop immediately.

It just pulsed slower.

Then weaker.

And then, without warning, it vanished.

At first, they thought Nu'raak had overexerted its reach.

That was normal.

No newborn had ever maintained a signal for more than thirty pulses.

And they were happy with the range that they got and even made plans to clone these bugs so that they could send metal signals more quickly using these bugs.

But when they tried to contact the ship through the main channels, no reply.

They thought it was a delay.

So they tried again.

And again.

Then they pinged the backup communication nodes.

Nothing.

That was not normal.

So they tried something else.

They contacted the ships nearby. Vanguard-6. Vanguard-8. Vanguard-10.

But the moment those signals spread into the same quadrant, the feedback was strange.

The space around that sector was… still.

Too still.

"No scatter signatures," one processor muttered. "No radiation drift. No corpse flares."

"They didn't crash."

"They didn't explode."

"They just vanished."

The tendril queen floated lower in her chamber.

"Send a scout," she said simply.

Two drone-class scout pods detached from the side of the command vessel within minutes. They launched without ceremony, sliding through space like silver beetles, headed directly for the last known position of Vanguard-7.

The hive fell into silence again.

And though no one spoke it aloud, they were all thinking the same thing.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong. ƒгeewёbnovel.com

The Zerg didn't lose ships—not like this. Even when destroyed, the hive could track a wreck. Sense leftover biomass. Pick up thermal scraps or mind-dust.

But now, there was nothing.

It was as if Vanguard-7 had been erased.

And inside that ship had been Nu'raak.

They're the rarest newborn in a hundred cycles.

And it was also something that could advance their tribe to a much higher level, which they could use to get more resources.

So the sudden disappearance of the bug caused the tendril queen to click softly.

Her mind stretched across the signal grid, feeling for anything- any tiny spark from the missing node within the child's skull.

But there was only silence.

Just cold, silent, dark.

She narrowed her eyes.

She didn't like this, as although she knew that there would be unknown dangers all around, this was just too bizarre and not something that could just be chalked up to an 'accident'.

"Send a third scout," she said. "One that carries a mind probe."

"We've already dispatched two," a processor replied. "They'll arrive in six pulses."

"Send a third anyway. And tag it with a beacon. I want that space marked."

The chamber dimmed slightly as orders spread through the neural net.

Outside, the void remained calm.

But tension rippled across the hive.

The Queen had not yet been informed. She was still far away, deep within the protected core system. But if the silence continued, she would know soon.

And when she found out…

There would be consequences.

Even among the Zerg, losing a test subject that was valuable without an explanation was unacceptable.

Inside the data chamber, the processors ran more simulations.

Some suggested interference from an unknown spatial anomaly.

Others suspected cloaking fields layered in a way the hive hadn't seen before.

A few even considered biological contamination—unlikely, but not impossible.

But none of them had the real answer.

Because none of them knew that Vanguard-7 had wandered too close to a trap set by a race that they would have to face in the future.

And now… it was gone.

In the far distance, the two scouts sped forward, engines low and silent.

They would find something.

Or they wouldn't return.

Either way, the Zerg were no longer watching quietly.

Now, they were hunting.