Murphy was in a hurry. After making the necessary arrangements for Widia, he confirmed that Madam Fendil would need several more days to finish preparing the downgraded artificial divine spark. Then he left the Creation Engine and headed for the Life Greenhouse.
The Gray Desert where it stood had changed dramatically since his last visit.
Murphy had used terrain reshaping to sink the entire region below the horizon, then formed nearly impassable, rugged mountains around the Gray Desert. Suppression devices, centered on the Life Greenhouse and shaped like crystal towers, were scattered throughout the surrounding desert mountains to keep the still-chaotic swarms of bugs from moving about freely.
The Fortress of Sin, in the Gobi outside the mountains, had become an advance fortress for the Old Continent to monitor the swarms' movements. Aside from the Sin Dwarves who had gradually returned, nearly every faction had set up its own observation post there.
After the Boundless Insect Calamity ended, nearly all the swarms around the continent entered dormancy. There were two reasons for leaving the Zero Hive behind. First, out of consideration for Hades, the Netherworld Bug, the Lord of the Swarms had instructed the Sanghae people to domesticate these war bugs and bring a new power system to the continent.
The other reason was ecological research.
The druids of the Avalon Church believed that if they could figure out how the swarm's will worked, the Boundless Insect Calamity—which had once disrupted the continent's order—might be turned into a "weapon" for the Order faction.
Everyone had seen the destruction the calamity could cause. If the Order faction could one day use this weapon on the battlefield against Chaos, it would easily offset Chaos's advantage in numbers. And if rapid, orderly evolution could be introduced as well, the swarms would surely become