I Am The Swarm

Faced with the oncoming barrage of dense artillery fire, the Swarm forces did not adjust course to evade, as the Riken had anticipated. Instead, the entire formation contracted inward, using the Primordial bodies at the forefront as living shields to absorb the attack head-on.

Due to the narrowing of the formation into an irregular cylindrical shape, the area exposed to the assault was extremely limited. Out of the 5,000 Primordial bodies, only 200 to 300 at the very front suffered severe damage in this volley. Despite their battered state, their broken forms were still carried by the swarm, continuing to serve as shields for the second wave of fire.

This sight struck the Riken with awe.

“What a terrifying civilization!” they thought. Imagine if it were them. Could they resolutely place their fleet in harm’s way under such intense bombardment?

Highly unlikely.

Their warships housed not only commanders but numerous soldiers and crew. Even if a captain ordered the sacrifice of their entire ship, whether such a command would be executed in the heat of a life-and-death crisis was doubtful.

In a split-second moment where the tide of battle could shift, even the slightest hesitation would render such a maneuver impossible to execute. Yet, the Swarm’s Primordial bodies at the forefront exhibited no hesitation. Hundreds of them moved in perfect unison, seamlessly forming the defensive configuration.

For the Riken, who had no understanding of the Swarm’s biological nature, this level of cohesion and execution was utterly horrifying.

“What are they trying to do?”

After their initial shock, the Riken were puzzled by the Swarm forces’ actions, unable to discern their intentions.

“They’re heading straight for Planet Raze! Are they planning to land there?”

“Fools! They’re courting death!”

Indeed, for the Riken, maneuvering large spacecraft to land on a planet was immensely challenging. The mutual gravitational pull necessitated engines of extraordinary power to accomplish such an operation.

Exiting the planet’s gravity well would also inflict damage on the ship’s structure. Designing a vessel capable of such maneuvers would require substantial rethinking of its overall structure.

The Riken’s large warships were all assembled directly in space and were not built to withstand strong gravitational forces. If it were a low-gravity satellite, they might attempt a direct landing. However, Planet Raze, with its formidable gravitational pull, restricted their warships to orbit, unable to land freely on its surface.

Judging by their own standards, the Riken thought the Swarm’s commanders must have lost their minds. Once the Swarm descended, taking off again would be exceedingly difficult.

“Be cautious. This could be a feint, a diversion!”

“I agree.”

Many commanders concurred, suspecting that the Swarm forces might perform a sudden turn near Planet Raze, using it as a shield to avoid encirclement. By enduring the planetary defense cannons on the far side of the planet, they could potentially break through the blockade. Such a maneuver might result in heavy losses but would avoid total annihilation.

As the second wave of artillery fire from Planet Raze hit, the few hundred Primordial bodies at the forefront sustained even more grievous injuries. Some of the most severely damaged were vaporized by the intense heat, their internal fungal strains obliterated, and completely killed. This marked the first time the Swarm’s Primordial bodies succumbed to conventional weaponry in their conflict with the Riken.

By the time the third wave of artillery fire arrived, the angles had been adjusted, concentrating the barrage on the Swarm’s front. If the Swarm absorbed this round in its entirety, they could potentially lose over a thousand Primordial bodies.

However, such an ideal scenario remained just that—a fantasy. Sarah and her Blades weren’t foolish. The Swarm forces abruptly dispersed, creating gaps in the concentrated firing zone, then scattered toward Planet Raze.

When the fourth wave of artillery switched to a dispersed coverage, the Swarm forces regrouped into a single formation.

Subsequent planetary defense barrages experimented with multiple targeting methods, such as emphasizing the regions where the Swarm concentrated. However, these proved futile. The Swarm simply vacated the heavily targeted zones, reorganizing into several more “slender” cylindrical formations around the periphery.

In this exchange of tactics, after more than a dozen waves of artillery fire, the Swarm forces didn’t make the anticipated sharp turn but instead headed straight for Planet Raze, reaching its low orbit—just a step away from the surface.

As the descending swarm of Primordial bodies plunged toward the surface, they abruptly began ejecting vast quantities of Mature bodies and Larval bodies from within.

During the earlier bombardment, the Swarm had lost over a thousand Primordial bodies. From the initial 5,000-plus, only about 3,000 remained. In just a matter of minutes, their losses exceeded a hundredfold compared to the past ten days of intense combat.

However, with the release of the smaller Space Octopuses carried within their bodies, their numbers instantly multiplied dozens of times over.

The sight of hundreds of thousands of Space Octopuses diving toward the surface was nothing short of spectacular. The 30,000 ground-based cannons found themselves momentarily overwhelmed, unable to decide which targets to prioritize.

In the brief delay caused by this hesitation, the Swarm forces moved even closer. After hastily firing two more volleys, the ground cannons had lost their optimal firing angles.

Once the Space Octopuses closed the distance, the ground cannons appeared clumsy and ineffective. Against the agile Space Octopuses, their turrets couldn’t adjust fast enough to track their movements.

In contrast, for the immobile ground cannons, it took only a single point-blank shot from a Mature Space Octopus’s electromagnetic railgun to destroy them.

While the planet’s surface defenses included some close-in weapon systems, they were utterly insufficient against the overwhelming numbers of the Swarm forces. Their attempts to halt the destruction were akin to trying to quench a raging fire with a handful of water.

The Riken never expected this turn of events. In their view, the Swarm forces should have focused on escape. Although the Swarm appeared to have disrupted the ground-based cannons by forcefully landing on Planet Raze, it also seemed to have sacrificed any chance of retreat.

This maneuver left the Riken commanders bewildered.

Even if they managed to annihilate this Swarm vanguard, the Riken would still find themselves in a difficult position. While the ground-based cannons were lifeless objects and mass-produced on assembly lines, deploying so many of them required a significant amount of time and effort.

Judging by the Swarm’s current rate of destruction, it was likely that the cannons would be almost entirely wiped out before the Riken could eliminate the Swarm forces. Reestablishing such a defensive network before the arrival of the Swarm’s follow-up forces would be impossible.

Once this war was over, Planet Raze would lose its strategic value. It would no longer serve as a thorn in the Swarm’s path.

In the short term, wiping out this vanguard force might seem like a victory. But in the long run, it was a loss for the Riken.

Still, this conclusion was entirely one-sided wishful thinking on the part of the Riken.

Completely ignorant of the Swarm’s biological nature, they viewed trading lives for lifeless objects as irrational. However, for the Swarm, such exchanges were merely standard procedure.

Even if the Swarm truly did exchange lives to eliminate a “thorn,” it wouldn’t be a loss in their eyes.

And, in truth, the situation was far from as simple as it seemed.

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