I Am The Swarm-Chapter 804: Reformation

And the Swarm had no intention of dragging out a slow war of attrition. That would take too long. So the mutated Primordial Bodies began to split up, advancing individually to open new routes.

This shift created a new headache for the Ji. Although each mutated Primordial body covered a large area, in the vastness of space, they were tiny targets.

Using area bombardment risked setting off their own mines. But if they held their fire, the Primordial Bodies would continue devouring the minefields at speed.

The Ji couldn’t even dispatch small units for close-range sniping—since any route a Primordial body had passed through was guaranteed to be safe. Sending in sacrificial units was pointless, and even the Ji’s inflexible AI couldn’t justify that logic.

Ultimately, they had no choice but to keep detonating mines, but this still didn’t stop the Swarm’s momentum. The next wave of mutated Primordial Bodies surged forward without pause.

Though each cleared route was narrow—unsuitable for mass troop movement—dozens of Primordial Bodies could still pass side by side.

If only one or two of these narrow paths had been opened, the Ji could easily block them. But as the number grew, sealing all of them became impossible.

To accelerate the push, the Swarm adopted a combined arms strategy. The Puffer Cannonfish units, with nothing else to do, simply performed wide-area bombardments, clearing out large zones of mines.

The combination of pinpoint and broad-spectrum clearing drastically shrunk the Ji’s minefield territory, and the Ji had no good solution. They could only redirect their limited new warships to reinforce various sectors and establish thicker defenses.

But this wasn’t just happening on the fringes—the main battlefield wasn’t faring much better.

Previously, the Inner-circle Alliance had detonated three stars near Ji borderlines, creating three primary battlefronts. Though Ji forces had scored some kills during the betrayal, the second betrayal saw a flood of Swarm troops overrun the Ji defenses.

After the Inner-circle Alliance exited the war, what remained was a fragile balance between Ji and Swarm forces along the border.

With support from their War Stars, the Ji even managed to hold a slight advantage.

But that changed once the Swarm completed its new Star Gate network, drawing in a massive influx of reinforcements. So many Primordial Bodies remained idle in the rear lines that they were now being assembled into Swarm versions of War Stars.

Though building War Stars was far harder than previous Swarm megastructures—due to the extreme complexity of balancing gravitational forces in spherical structures versus linear ones—the Swarm had long since mastered such techniques.

These methods came not just from the Ji and Inner-circle civilizations, but also from another star system—Planet Botian, a unique world with localized wormholes and a metallic core.

That planet was likely a relic of a powerful ancient civilization’s War Star. The extremely durable alloy used in its structure had once stymied even the Swarm’s full might, and in some respects, was stronger than the Ji War Stars.

To crack its defenses, Luo Wen had created the Red Fang Breakers. After breaking through, the Swarm extracted advanced tech from it—advancing their megastructure engineering from linear to spherical construction.

Back then, the Swarm had no need for War Stars. Their wars were fought abroad, away from their core territory. The slow mobility of War Stars didn’t suit their strategies.

But that was then. Now, though the Desolation-Class Motherships could contest Ji War Stars, the latter housed superior energy cores, enabling much greater firepower. Having their own War Stars was now a significant advantage.

The Ji-Swarm frontline stretched across three light-years—a massive front. Despite the scale, most of the combat remained long-range artillery duels. The Primordial Bodies couldn’t get close, and with only two main cannons per unit, their firepower density was weak.

Thus, Primordial Bodies were relegated to becoming defensive chains, while long-range fire support came from Puffer Cannonfishes and Desolation-Class Motherships.

Still, the Primordial Bodies were the most numerous Swarm unit, and the Swarm couldn’t afford to leave such a vast force as mere spectators. So, reassembling them into War Stars became the new path forward.

In Swarm terminology, these were called Planetary War Bugs. Considering each Primordial body was only about 500 meters long, constructing a single Planetary War Bug required an astonishing number of units.

Thus, even with the vast quantities of Primordial Bodies stuck behind the frontlines, only a few dozen Planetary War Bugs could be assembled.