I Am The Swarm-Chapter 822: Reincarnation

The Ji Battle Stars, having served as the primary bulwark against pressure during the previous phase of battle, had drawn an immense amount of firepower. The side facing the Swarm forces was now in complete tatters.

Although internal repairs had been made by nano-bots, the surface could not receive the same treatment. This led to breaches forming in what had once been an impenetrable fortress.

And once there were breaches, everything became easier. Inserting through cracks was what Swarm units excelled at—large cracks were for large needles, small cracks for small ones.

With the flanking warships pinned down, the Battle Star’s own firepower was no longer sufficient to stop a Swarm charge of this magnitude. Soon enough, the Battle Star met the same fate as the other warships.

Though its main and secondary cannons were still firing, its spherical surface was already crawling with Primordial bodies. At this moment, they were either searching for potential openings or creating new ones themselves.

Whenever they found a hole, space octopuses of all sizes swarmed in. Although the Battle Star was enormous and a body hundreds of meters long was insignificant by comparison, making it exceedingly difficult to destroy…

Still, as always, the Swarm’s numbers were simply overwhelming.

As more and more Swarm units infiltrated the Battle Star’s interior, zones centered around those openings began to fall silent—main and secondary cannons alike ceased firing, and the silenced areas quickly expanded outward.

The Swarm had no need to preserve the Battle Star’s integrity for post-battle salvage or redeployment. So they attacked with complete abandon.

Close-range energy cannon blasts, electromagnetic bombs—everything accelerated the Battle Star’s downfall.

And without the Battle Stars, those tough and hard-hitting frontline units, the remaining warships were even less capable of stopping the Swarm’s charge.

Some warships had already begun retreating. The first to flee were the Starport ships—these logistics units were extremely valuable, especially to the resource-depleted Ji race.

The collapse had begun. Along the multi-thousand-light-year-long defensive line, the Swarm initially broke through just a few points. But those points quickly spread laterally, and in the end, breaches bloomed everywhere.

This war brought losses to the Ji race beyond imagination.

First, there were the several million Battle Stars—ten times more than were lost in the previous battle. Then there were the countless Ji warships—so many that they could no longer be tallied. The troops the Ji had amassed over a million years, along with the forces they had rapidly produced afterward, were wiped out by nearly fifty percent in this single war. And this was with some units managing to retreat.

The Swarm also suffered heavy losses in this war. After all, if even the defending Ji had taken such massive damage, the attacking Swarm—which had used the most outrageous assault tactics—likely had casualty numbers that added two extra zeros on top of the Ji’s.

But it was all worth it. As the victors, the Swarm reaped everything in the aftermath.

The wreckage from both armies was gathered into mountainous heaps in space, each one the size of billions of planets—metal-flesh mountains.

Once these resources were digested and converted by the Swarm, the units lost in battle would be instantly replenished—and more would remain beyond that.

Fungal carpets began spreading, Brood Queens were birthed, and the hatching began. The star system, which had been emptied by the Ji and left with only the sun, was now an ideal development zone for the Swarm.

However, the Swarm did not absorb all of the metal-flesh mountains. Around ten million were deliberately left intact. These would be carried to the front lines in the next war by other combat units to accelerate the construction of Star Gates and the hatching of Planetary War Bugs.

After the war, although most of the Swarm stayed behind to clear the battlefield, nearly thirty percent of their forces split off and began pursuing the retreating Ji units from a distance.

These Ji warships retreated another hundred light-years. This was now the innermost core of the Ji race—there was nowhere left to run.

Naturally, as the absolute core, its defensive strength was also the most formidable.

This strength was mainly reflected in the number of Battle Stars—nearly a terrifying twenty million of them. The number of warships was similar to the previous battle, since they were more mobile and not like the Battle Stars, which were only suited for passive defense.

Because the defensive line had shrunk further, even with the same number of warships, the density and ferocity of the Ji firepower was several levels above that of the last battle. Not to mention the vastly increased number of Battle Stars—this made the Swarm’s brute-force flesh mountain tactics much harder to execute due to the prevalence of Gene Destruction Cannons.

But did the Swarm care?

Beyond the range of the Ji’s defensive guns, massive Swarm forces arrived at the battlefield via warp travel. Once they had established a standoff capability, Swarm Star Gates began construction.

With the Star Gates complete, more Swarm units arrived—bringing with them the wreckage from the previous battle. As a result, new Star Gates and Planetary War Bugs began construction and hatching.

The Ji race no longer had the ability to organize another raid against the Star Gates.

Everything that followed mirrored the previous battle almost exactly.

Not only that—even the way the fighting began was nearly identical. Once the Swarm deemed their preparations complete, they launched an all-out assault.

Although the Battle Stars and Gene Destruction Cannons were a huge nuisance to the Swarm, they were only that—a nuisance.

Following the last war, the newly hatched troops from the absorbed spoils of victory had undergone decades of solar charging and had matured into capable soldiers. Due to the shorter distance and the many Swarm Star Gates left on the battlefield from the previous war, reinforcements arrived at the front even faster.

Combined with reinforcements from the rear and the uninterrupted supply lines from ten extragalactic bases, the Swarm forces surged toward the Ji defense lines in an unending tide.

Because of the abundance of Gene Destruction Cannons, the Swarm could no longer rely on flesh mountain charges and had to return to swarming with individual units. This made the battle far bloodier—though for the most part, the bloodshed fell on the Swarm.

This war dragged on for an unimaginably long time. During this period, the Swarm maintained high-intensity assault tactics. Unable to break the Ji lines after long observation, Luo Wen concluded that the troop numbers were still insufficient. So, ten new extragalactic bases joined the fray. The ultra-massive central transit hub at the core of the Swarm’s Genesis Sector Base was expanded several times. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com

New reinforcements joined, but the Ji did not feel much additional pressure.

Because in the previous battles, the density of Swarm troops had already reached its limit. Even if reinforcements increased by several times, they couldn’t all attack at once.

Thus, Swarm forces piled up in layers around the frontlines, surrounding the Ji race in concentric rings—waiting their turn to charge. If there had still been living crew members aboard the Ji warships, they likely would’ve collapsed in despair at the sight.

The Ji had already dismantled everything they could. The Ji race had no place left to stand. The transport ships carrying hibernation pods now filled ten entire star systems.