I Am The Swarm

The newly arrived wave of Primordial Space Octopuses brought a fresh change in deployment. Among them, 200 were equipped with electromagnetic railguns, joining the 30 or so surviving units from the previous wave in providing long-range fire support.

This drastically increased the Swarm’s long-range firepower, while the Rikens’ firepower had diminished significantly. With warships destroyed by bombardment or sabotaged by blocked turrets, their ability to retaliate was no longer what it once was.

The Primordial Octopuses positioned for long-range assault could now only be threatened by the Riken warships’ main cannons. As the balance tipped in the Swarm’s favor, their long-range firepower soon matched that of the Rikens.

However, this equality only applied to the mid-range exchange.

The Riken fleet’s second line of secondary turrets still maintained a semblance of effectiveness, but their third and fourth lines of defense were riddled with gaps from earlier assaults by the mature bodies and larval bodies.

Moreover, while the secondary turrets could still provide some resistance, their firepower was no longer a lethal threat to the Primordial Octopuses.

Using data to illustrate.

A single main cannon shot could penetrate a Primordial body’s armor and render it adrift with three or four hits. In contrast, a secondary turret needed five or six direct hits to breach the armor and far more to disable a Primordial Octopus entirely.

Yet, Primordial bodies were no sitting targets. Hitting the same spot multiple times in succession was a daunting challenge.

With the main cannons occupied suppressing the distant Primordial bodies, only scattered shots could target the transport-oriented Primordial bodies breaching the secondary lines.

As a result, of the over 300 transport units in this wave, only a dozen or so were lost before breaking through.

This was a dire situation—not just for the Rikens but for the Swarm as well.

Luo Wen hadn’t expected the seemingly mighty Riken warships to falter so quickly. By the second wave of reinforcements, their defenses were already collapsing.

The Rikens had no effective countermeasures for close-range combat against the space octopuses.

Although the second wave of larval bodies had suffered heavy losses to the CIWS, over a thousand still swarmed around the Riken fleet. The CIWS systems themselves were now heavily damaged.

A mere 17 larval bodies infiltrating a single warship had managed to destroy it from within, leaving the Rikens so wary that they even avoided retrieving escape pods.

Despite all this, the Riken situation continued to deteriorate. Many warships were damaged by the Primordial Octopuses’ long-range bombardment, creating breaches that allowed more larval bodies to infiltrate. Escape pods began launching from several warships.

Though only two of the fleet’s 300 warships were completely destroyed, over a hundred suffered varying degrees of damage. Worse still, the remaining transport-type Primordial bodies had broken through the secondary defenses.

The implications were dire. Each of these transports carried at least thousands of mature bodies and tens of thousands of larval bodies.

Riken warships, measuring just over a kilometer long, paled in comparison to the 500-meter-plus Primordial Octopuses. Even without electromagnetic railguns, their tentacles alone posed a catastrophic threat.

If the transport units reached the fleet, the remaining warships would fall in no time—even without reinforcements from subsequent waves.

Yet, the Swarm had already launched 15 waves of Primordial bodies, all en route to the battlefield. Even if the Swarm ceased further reinforcements, the forces already deployed were more than enough to annihilate the Riken fleet. ȐÀꞐỒβƐS̩

But Luo Wen’s true objective wasn’t to destroy the fleet entirely.

He had prepared for a hard-fought battle, going all-out from the start. If not for the limited number of electromagnetic launchers, even more troops would have reached the field by now.

To his surprise, the Riken fleet was already on the verge of collapse before he could bring his full strength to bear.

Luo Wen found himself hoping the Rikens had some secret weapon left to deploy. “If you’ve got any trump cards, use them already,” he thought. “At this rate, the whole thing is becoming farcical.”

As if in answer to his prayer—or perhaps spurred by their recognition of the looming threat—the Rikens revealed their ace.

General Masai gave the order, and hundreds of strategic nuclear missiles were launched from the fleet. These weren’t the tactical nuclear weapons used by ground forces but super-nukes with yields exceeding 200 megatons each.

The missiles detonated as they neared the Primordial Octopus formations. While the octopuses had a chance to evade the blasts, Luo Wen saw an opportunity to leverage the event, orchestrating a delayed reaction from the Swarm.

In truth, the outcome would have been the same regardless. The explosions were unimaginably powerful. Even if the octopuses had moved earlier, their survival would have been unlikely.

The dazzling nuclear explosions illuminated space, lingering like hundreds of miniature suns. Some of the Swarm’s optical observation units suffered severe damage.

The Primordial formations directly facing the blasts were vaporized.

The resulting radiation belt spanned thousands of kilometers, temporarily cutting off the Riken fleet from the Swarm’s reinforcements.

The intense light, heat, and charged particles from the explosions first struck the Riken fleet.

The EMP effects generated by hundreds of high-yield nuclear detonations were catastrophic, disabling many of the fleet’s electronic systems.

Fortunately, the Rikens had anticipated some collateral effects and initiated emergency protocols, shutting down vulnerable systems to prevent irreparable damage.

Even so, smaller units—fighters, escape pods, and drones—were rendered inoperable. Without rescue, these crews faced suffocation and starvation in the void.

The explosions’ effects weren’t limited to space. On the nearby Great Dawn Planet, shockwaves wreaked havoc on the atmosphere, triggering massive tidal storms, earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions. The planet’s magnetic field became unstable, further exacerbating the chaos.

The Rikens’ initial confidence in their superior technology had been shattered by the Swarm’s relentless assault. After the first wave, their arrogance faltered; after the second, their morale crumbled entirely.

Some had already proposed retreat, but the realization of the Swarm’s full scale of reinforcements solidified their decision.

This was Luo Wen’s deliberate ploy—a display of the Swarm’s might designed to terrify his opponents into fleeing.

Convinced they had narrowly escaped annihilation, the Rikens prepared to withdraw, believing the heavens had offered them a second chance.

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