I Am The Swarm

Luo Wen only briefly paid attention to the situation in the Genesis System before redirecting his focus to Planet Botian. It had been fifty years since the Swarm first landed on Botian.

The Botians’ lifespan was extremely short, likely due to their relatively poor technological development. Their average lifespan was less than a century. The once spirited young mecha pilots like Zeki and Rooney had now grown old and gray-haired.

Twenty years ago, it seemed that the forces on the other side of the wormhole had recognized the risks of this side. The wormhole’s activation times became increasingly erratic. On one occasion, it remained inactive for a full five years.

Just as the Botians began to believe that their adversary had given up, the wormhole suddenly reopened, and ten monsters emerged in one go—stronger than ever before.

The surprise attack caught the Botians off guard, resulting in devastating losses. The first wave of mecha warriors sent to eliminate the monsters was completely annihilated, leaving five of the monsters still alive.

The five monsters went on to destroy several submarines and, before the Botian reinforcements could arrive, split into two groups to advance in different directions.

Unfortunately for them, one group of three monsters was intercepted mid-journey by eight mecha warriors. At the cost of five mecha, the monsters were finally defeated. This attack exceeded the Botians’ defensive capacity—at the time, they had only twenty mecha in active service.

After dealing with the first group of monsters, only three severely damaged mecha remained. Attempting to stop the remaining two monsters with such a weakened force would have been tantamount to suicide.

In a last-ditch effort, the Botian leadership held an emergency meeting and decided to launch nuclear missiles to kill the monsters before they could reach the city. As a result, Botian gained yet another zone of radioactive pollution, which immediately claimed the title of the planet’s most contaminated area.

Luo Wen, however, was not concerned about the Botians’ losses or the environmental pollution. Such contamination was trivial to the Swarm, which could traverse the vacuum of space with their physical bodies.

What intrigued him was the question of what the two groups of monsters were trying to accomplish.

It was evident that the forces on the other side of the wormhole had some understanding of Planet Botian’s massive metallic satellite. It was known that the monsters lacked any negative energy-based attack capabilities, meaning they couldn’t violently breach the satellite’s metal shell. Their objective, therefore, seemed apparent.

“They know the location of the metal shell’s gateway. It’s highly likely they also know how to open it,” Luo Wen quickly concluded.

Due to the Botians’ weak technological capabilities, the Swarm had infiltrated their society rapidly over the years, with the intelligent entities gaining significant influence.

If Luo Wen wanted to, he could likely delay the Botians’ decisions and actions. With its sheer strength, the Swarm could even intervene to prevent the Botians from killing the monsters.

By doing so, Luo Wen might have been able to use the monsters to locate the metal shell’s gateway. However, after careful consideration, he abandoned this idea.

Even if the gateway were located, Luo Wen had no knowledge of how to open it. Even if the monsters managed to open it, the consequences were entirely unpredictable.

After all, everything about the forces on the other side of the wormhole remained purely speculative.

Another significant reason Luo Wen abandoned this idea was that the Swarm’s research into active negative energy had already entered the practical testing phase.

It wouldn’t be long before the Swarm could rely on its own strength to open the metal shell.

With this safer and more reliable method in sight, Luo Wen saw no need to take unnecessary risks.

In theory, mastering negative energy technology—while not definitively harder than gravity-based technology—was at least on the same level of complexity. For an ordinary civilization to conquer such a field in just a few decades would be nothing short of a pipe dream. ȓΑ𐌽օꞖЕȿ

But the Swarm, with its thirty million immortal research-oriented intelligent entities, had turned that dream into a reality.

Indeed, describing it this way might be a bit exaggerated. The primary task of the intelligent entities was to observe negative energy and filter out the more active components. The rest of the work could only be completed at such a rapid pace under Luo Wen’s direct supervision.

When a specific type of active negative energy, named F-371, was selected after rigorous filtering, Luo Wen was able to avoid many detours during its production thanks to the negative energy gene template derived from the monsters.

Using his innate ability to precisely manipulate genes, Luo Wen spent years of research and experimentation before successfully modifying the monster’s genetic structure to incubate an organ capable of directly producing F-371 energy.

Luo Wen named this organ the HF Organ, an abbreviation for “Hyperactive Negative Energy Field Organ.”

With an energy generator in place, the next step was to weaponize it. Currently, the Swarm’s research on negative energy had only reached the level of basic production and manufacturing, with little progress in more advanced applications.

For example, using electrical energy as an analogy, the Swarm had essentially just built their first power plant. However, they were still far from being able to harness that energy to create something like ball lightning. On the other hand, building pipelines to transmit and utilize the energy was comparatively simpler.

This approach conveniently benefited from the monster gene template. The monsters’ original negative energy transmission system and its associated field generation system could be modified and repurposed for use. Armed with the experience of modifying the HF Organ, Luo Wen found himself well-equipped to handle the transformation of these two systems.

In just over a year, the two systems were successfully modified. However, the results from their initial deployment were less than ideal.

The monsters’ original negative energy membrane was primarily designed for passive defense during wormhole traversal. In contrast, F-371 had entirely different properties. It was more destructive but also significantly more unstable.

The characteristics of negative energy meant that it could only be contained using magnetic fields. However, the carrier for the magnetic field generator required by F-371 imposed far higher demands.

Fortunately, this problem wasn’t difficult to solve. By analyzing the performance of the metallic shell during experimental trials in materials science, the Swarm’s understanding of related theories advanced significantly.

Combining this with their inherent “cheating” methods, a new type of cell was created using genes from the metallic snail. These cells could absorb metallic elements and rearrange their molecular structure to produce a unique metallic material similar to a metallic exoskeleton.

After undergoing numerous practical tests, this led to the birth of a new offensive weapon system.

Fueled by an atomic furnace, the HF Organ would convert energy into F-371, which was then transmitted to the weapon system via the modified energy transmission system. The energy was contained and enveloped around the weapon by a connected magnetic field generation system.

The weapon itself was a melee weapon that could be customized into various forms based on requirements, such as claws, blades, or horns. It was composed of a keratin outer layer reinforced with the special metallic substance. The keratin provided malleability, while the special metal acted as an “enchantment” for enhanced durability.

Even without being enveloped in negative energy, the weapon’s innate toughness made it a formidable tool. When combined with negative energy, it became nearly unstoppable, capable of piercing even the sturdiest defenses.

Luo Wen named this weapon system FN Blade!

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