I Am The Swarm

Without Luo Wen’s knowledge, a group of Riken senior generals and strategists had concocted a rationale for why the Swarm was attacking their civilization.

Even the instances where the Swarm appeared to hold back were retroactively explained with surprisingly convincing arguments.

Had Luo Wen not been directly involved, even he might have found these explanations persuasive.

From the Rikens’ perspective, their interpretation of the Swarm’s motives, while slightly divergent in certain details, ultimately led to the same conclusion.

However, Luo Wen’s interest in the Rikens’ so-called “treasure” had waned. With Cleo in his ranks, the allure of the ancient starship was no longer as pressing.

After all, Cleo’s advanced level of intelligence allowed access to all the data the Rikens had gathered from their investigations. As a mechanical civilization, the Rikens excelled in certain detection methods far beyond the Swarm’s capabilities. Even if the Swarm acquired the ancient starship, they wouldn’t be able to process or utilize it as effectively as the Rikens currently did.

With this in mind, Luo Wen decided it was better to let the Rikens continue their analysis. This saved resources and allowed him to observe any potential underlying schemes.

His careful scrutiny of events had not been fruitless. Luo Wen had already uncovered some intriguing details.

The Rikens, through their study of the ancient starship, had developed a gravitational-wave based radar technology capable of detecting cloaked units. This advancement was built upon gravitational theories derived from the starship.

Over the years, the Intelligent Entities hidden among the Rikens had grown to a substantial number. As a result, much of what the Rikens developed was effectively transparent to the Swarm. The new radar technology and its theoretical foundations had long been acquired by the Swarm.

After digesting and refining this knowledge, the Swarm’s Intelligent Entities had innovatively adapted it into biological technology.

In some respects, biological technology appeared to offer superior performance in handling gravitational waves. Drawing upon various analogous biological organs for inspiration, the Swarm had implemented the technology more effectively than the Rikens.

Several newly engineered Observer Bugs equipped with this technology were deployed, hidden within the void.

These Observer Bugs detected unusual disturbances near the battlefield on Planet Raze. The exchange of fire and the deployment of weaponry generated countless chaotic energy waves. It would have been easy to overlook these anomalies if not for Luo Wen’s prior vigilance.

Revisiting the Observer Bugs’ records, Luo Wen identified small, hidden objects in the target area. These objects were too diminutive for Riken observation instruments to detect.

If the Swarm hadn’t infiltrated the Riken ranks with insiders, Luo Wen might have suspected these objects to be some secret Riken weaponry. But with his understanding of the Rikens’ operational capabilities, he knew they had no deployments in that vicinity.

The objects seemed unaware of the Observer Bugs disguised as meteoroids, confirming their presence and suggesting they belonged to neither the Rikens nor the Swarm.

This discovery intrigued Luo Wen. It implied the existence of a third-party force operating in the shadows.

Perhaps these entities were neighboring civilizations drawn by the nuclear detonations, or maybe they were the Watchers Luo Wen had previously speculated about.

Luo Wen leaned toward the hypothesis that these hidden entities were Watchers. After all, Godzilla had lived on Planet T855 in the Neighboring Star System for an untold number of years, periodically venting its emotions with bursts of nuclear breath. If there were any spacefaring civilizations nearby, like the Rikens, they would likely have investigated these anomalies.

Whether any civilizations had done so before, Luo Wen didn’t know. What he did know was that in the past century, only the Rikens had ventured to explore the Neighboring Star System. Godzilla’s nuclear breath had relatively low yield; if detected from a great distance, it might simply appear as natural stellar activity, indistinguishable from emissions from a star or a planetary surface.

Based on this, Luo Wen judged that the only advanced powers near the Neighboring Star System were the Swarm and the Rikens.

However, the nuclear detonations unleashed by the Rikens in the region were of a completely different magnitude. Hundreds of high-yield nuclear weapons detonated almost simultaneously, releasing an energy signature too conspicuous to ignore. This event could have drawn the attention of even more distant civilizations.

Herein lay a problem. If the distant civilization’s technology was comparable to the Rikens, they might have dispatched a fleet to investigate, but such a fleet would still be en route. Conversely, if their technology was more advanced and capable of faster-than-light travel, they should have already expanded into the region during their growth. Yet neither Luo Wen’s personal experiences nor the Rikens’ records mentioned such an expansion.

The only plausible explanation was that these Watchers had arrived long ago but chose to remain hidden, silently watching from the shadows—a scenario perfectly aligning with the concept of “Watchers”.

The hidden objects detected near Planet Raze were located at the site of the Rikens’ second wave of nuclear detonations, which had occurred only a decade prior. If these objects had traveled from a distant civilization, they must have either been en route coincidentally or possessed exceptional speed to arrive so quickly.

Luo Wen, however, was puzzled. In the Swarm’s early operations, they had never considered the possibility of external Watchers. Many of their activities were conducted openly, such as deploying Observer Bugs into space. If Watchers truly existed, it seemed unlikely that they wouldn’t have taken precautions against the Swarm’s surveillance.

Yet the cloaked units near Planet Raze appeared to show no such caution. Whether out of overconfidence in their own technology or due to the chaotic battlefield conditions, they hadn’t attempted to avoid detection by the Observer Bugs.

Could it be that the Observer Bugs’ cloaking technology had become so advanced that even these entities failed to notice them?

After much deliberation, Luo Wen surmised that the hidden entities might simply not know the Swarm had obtained gravitational-wave radar detection technology. Thus, they didn’t anticipate that the Swarm could observe them.

Out of caution, Luo Wen chose not to alert these entities to his awareness of their presence. Pretending to remain oblivious, he continued with the Swarm’s plans as if nothing had changed. He wanted to see what these Watchers were truly up to.

To Luo Wen, these furtive entities weren’t likely to harbor noble intentions. Fortunately, their misstep in revealing themselves had eased his concerns. Their detectability reduced their aura of mystery considerably.

After occupying Planet Raze, the Swarm didn’t rush to advance further. Instead, they used the planet as a forward base for recuperation and reorganization.

Though the Swarm had been developing beneath Planet Raze’s surface for over a decade, the subterranean space and resources were limited. Consequently, while reinforcements included many Space Octopuses at both mature and larval stages, none had yet advanced to Primordial bodies.

The Swarm had deployed a total of just over 15,000 Primordial bodies in the two battles for Planet Raze, representing only half of the Swarm’s forces in the Riken star system.

With Planet Raze now serving as an outpost, future Primordial bodies arriving in the Riken system could pause briefly at the outer asteroid belts to regroup before proceeding directly to join the main force.

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