I Am The Swarm

The proposal to retreat was swiftly approved. At Lieutenant Colonel Cross’s reminder, they ensured that no Riken clansmen were left behind on Great Dawn Planet.

On Great Dawn Planet, all personnel from various bases carried out an emergency evacuation.

Bases, supplies, and all kinds of useless weaponry and equipment were abandoned or destroyed.

Dr. Balt’s laboratory had to leave behind the intact corpse of Godzilla, taking only some tissue samples.

The Longevity Plants, however, were the top priority and the greatest reward of their mission. These plants were carefully placed into petri dishes and loaded onto transport ships.

As for the experimental equipment, all of it was destroyed.

The airships then took off in haste, heading toward the fleet in orbit.

At that moment, the sky lit up with hundreds of suns.

Fortunately, the Riken transport ships had not yet exited the atmosphere, and the atmospheric barrier significantly reduced the impact they suffered. Without this, they might have ended up like the escape pods—blown away to some unknown place.

The Rikens, demonstrating their resolve, abandoned several warships already infested with larval bodies, activated the self-destruct systems, and urgently transferred personnel.

After picking up the transport ships that had flown up from Great Dawn Planet, the entire fleet fired up their engines and fled in the opposite direction of the battlefield.

Seeing that the Rikens successfully escaped, Luo Wen exhaled deeply.

He hadn’t expected the Riken fleet to be as fragile as they turned out to be, even bordering on pathetic. It seemed their technological advancements primarily focused on engines, fleet construction, and materials, while their weapons technology had barely progressed. Their combat capabilities were laughably poor.

Meanwhile, the Rikens, seeing that the Swarm forces had not pursued them further, assumed that the radiation from the nuclear blasts had genuinely stopped the Swarm. They too breathed a sigh of relief, feeling as though they had narrowly escaped death.

In truth, the radiation could not stop the Swarm. After the high temperatures dissipated, the area essentially became a massive charging station for the Swarm.

If not for the fact that the Rikens hadn’t gotten far, Luo Wen would have already ordered the immobile space octopuses from the earlier battle to be dragged over for rapid recovery.

Shortly after the Rikens set sail, the Swarm’s seventh wave of Primordial Body units reached the battlefield.

The charade couldn’t be too obvious. Once the radiation belt between the two forces had cooled slightly, the Swarm organized over two thousand Primordial Body units to cross the belt and chase after the Riken fleet.

Though the Swarm’s engine technology lagged behind that of the Rikens, many of the Riken warships had sustained damage from earlier bombardments. While they could manage at low speeds, they became unstable and prone to structural failure at high velocities.

Yet, with the Swarm in pursuit, the Rikens dared not reduce their speed.

Along the path of the pursuit, Riken warships heavily damaged in the battle were occasionally abandoned. Most of the Rikens aboard these ships had already been transferred.

However, as the pursuit wore on, more warships began falling behind the main fleet. These warships were less severely damaged but were unable to keep up with the fleet’s accelerating pace.

The main fleet’s speed had increased to the point where transferring personnel from damaged warships was almost impossible. Yet, if they continued flying under these overburdened conditions, the warships would inevitably fail—or be overtaken by the Swarm.

Fortunately, these less-damaged warships decided to break away from the main fleet and fend for themselves.

This small splinter fleet headed for Planet T854, the first planet they had encountered upon arriving in the T85 Star System. They still had defensive forces, space factories, and resource collection equipment there.

By lingering there briefly, they hoped to repair their warships and then return home.

Now, they could only hope the Swarm, distracted by the larger Riken fleet, would ignore this small group.

If Lieutenant Colonel Cross and the Seeds were part of this splinter fleet, the Swarm would naturally follow the larger group, abandoning their pursuit of the splinter fleet. ᚱἈℕốʙЁS

Unfortunately, during the earlier battle, Lieutenant Colonel Cross’s ship had already been marked. Whether from the long-range bombardments of the Primordial Bodies or the harassment by Mature and Larval bodies, her area had been conspicuously avoided.

Moreover, when Dr. Balt’s team received the evacuation order, the Rikens had already decided to retreat. Naturally, the team carrying the precious Longevity Plants would not be placed on a damaged warship.

In the early stages of the retreat, the team had already transferred to General Masai’s flagship.

This information had been confirmed by Lieutenant Colonel Cross.

Thus, the unfortunate splinter fleet attracted the attention of the Swarm’s pursuing forces. The Swarm abandoned their pursuit of the rapidly accelerating main Riken fleet and instead turned their attention to this smaller fleet.

Watching the Swarm cease its pursuit, General Masai felt a heavy weight lift from his chest, though a trace of sorrow remained.

“Their sacrifice was worth it,” he murmured as he watched the surveillance footage of the damaged fleet being surrounded by the Swarm.

It was unclear whether he was trying to convince himself or absolve his guilt.

However, no one was more reluctant to see this outcome than General Masai. As the nominal commander of the expeditionary force, this operation had been a disastrous failure. Not only had they lost numerous warships, but they had also suffered heavy personnel losses, retreating in utter defeat.

Now, they could only hope Dr. Balt would make the most of their journey home and enhance the value of their findings.

The Riken fleet had dwindled from 315 main warships and 164 transport ships, carrying over 3 million personnel, to 206 main warships, 127 transport ships, and just over 2.4 million personnel.

The war had taken a significant toll on their primary warships, with fewer than 10 destroyed outright in battle. Most were abandoned during strategic withdrawals.

Personnel losses were also severe, though proportionally less than the losses of main warships. As a result, many warships and transport ships had taken in personnel who were not originally part of their crews.

These were mostly survivors transferred from heavily damaged warships abandoned early in the conflict.

While their supplies were barely sufficient to sustain these numbers for the return journey, they faced a shortage of about 200,000 stasis pods.

As a result, some would have to spend a portion of the monotonous interstellar journey awake, wasting a part of their lifespans.

Naturally, Dr. Balt’s team wouldn’t face such issues. Although they lacked stasis pods, they wouldn’t experience boredom. Their research into Longevity Plants would occupy their time.

Due to the sudden nature of the retreat, they had managed to bring a large number of harvested Longevity Plants. However, these plants were now like water without a source. If they couldn’t find a way to propagate them, their supply would eventually run out. Returning to T853 to harvest more was impossible in the short term.

Thus, Dr. Balt’s team had to focus not only on removing the plants’ side effects but also on discovering a method to cultivate and reproduce them.

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