2042, Togot Swarm
Unknown Regions, Catlia.
A blood-red Luukri-Hok-class battleship hovered beyond the planet's atmosphere. Countless drones darted around the planet, gathering and scanning intelligence.
Red Comet III, one of Grand Duke Tang Xiao of Dawn's personal flagships.
However, Tang Xiao was not aboard the ship enjoying its palace-like luxury. Instead, he had personally gone down to the planet's surface to communicate with the local Kilik Swarm tribe.
Draped in a black cloak, Tang Xiao arrived at the tribe's Mother Nest amid the escort of countless hideous insects. It was a biological structure dozens of meters tall, resembling a grotesque giant mushroom. Countless tentacles and cavities extended from its base directly into the ground.
The insects led Tang Xiao before the Mother Nest. The surface of the enormous biological structure writhed, then split open, revealing a huge eyeball more than two meters across. The eyeball squirmed toward Tang Xiao and studied him from top to bottom. Then, two tentacles with faint green light glowing at their tips extended from beside it.
A wave of high-frequency sound came from the Mother Nest, and the two tentacles gestured around Tang Xiao's temples. Although Tang Xiao could not understand it, he roughly grasped its meaning. The Mother Nest wanted him to connect those two tentacles to his temples so they could communicate.
Tang Xiao sneered. The Kilik Swarm was a highly typical Gestalt consciousness. It consisted of countless swarms, each possessing a Mother Nest. The Mother Nest was the only intelligent entity within a swarm, while all other insect individuals were subordinate bodies controlled by it.
At the height of the Kilik Swarm's power, there might once have been a supreme consciousness above all these Mother Nest consciousnesses. But now that the Kilik Swarm had been scattered and had degenerated, all they possessed