Discovery

On the Big Origin Star, the Swarm shifted its strategic focus to the ocean, and the production of the sea scouts Strange-Headed Fish, skyrocketed. The Wind God repeatedly released their Insect Egg into the sea.

Rowan wanted to thoroughly inspect the oceans of Big Origin Star in the years before his main body arrived. Now that Godzilla has appeared, there might also be Skull Island Handsome, King of Monsters Ghidorah.

But it turns out he was overthinking it. A few years later, because the cost of the Strange-Headed Fish Insect Egg is low and their initial size is relatively small, their numbers have grown to hundreds of thousands.

These marine scouts worked tirelessly, thoroughly surveying the seabed. Whenever they discovered an area with unusual radiation, they would send a Creep Seed to "scare away the enemy."

Unfortunately, they didn't find any monsters, not even a second Godzilla, let alone Ghidorah.

Moreover, over the years, not only has the continent where the Swarm base is located been thoroughly searched by the Swarm, but the other four continents have also been scouted by a large number of reconnaissance Flying Bug transported there by the Wind God.

These Flying Bug are smaller and cheaper, and like the Strange-Headed Fish, they diligently perform their scouting duties. Unfortunately, they haven't found anything on land either; although they have discovered some large monkeys, they are still far from being considered handsome.

Sarah, whose "toy" was completely destroyed by the Thermonuclear Breath, had no choice but to focus her energy on monitoring Godzilla and waiting for the arrival of the real Rowan, since her production sequence was full of scout units and she had no more practice units.

After unleashing its fury several years ago, Godzilla returned to its dormant state. It seems to need no food, surviving solely on radiation, and its killings are merely a way to vent its emotions.

Having just woken up, it seemed unable to go back to hibernation anytime soon, and would come out and cause trouble every few days. It seemed to hold a grudge against the purplish-gray Creep that had woken it up, and every time it came out, it would destroy a large area of Creep on the beach.

However, it only destroys the surface tissue of the Creep; the root system is rarely damaged. Once it has finished venting its energy, the Creep will regrow in a short time.

Rowan also turned his attention back to Big Origin Star, where a "Visit" team was keeping an eye on things, so there shouldn't be any problems. He needed to focus on his studies and improve every day.

With fewer and fewer genetic templates available for reference, the Swarm's technological advancements are increasingly reliant on its own capabilities for transformation. Therefore, it needs to seize the time to enrich its own knowledge base.

Life returned to normal.

Just when Rowan thought this peaceful life would continue for more than ten years, until his main body arrived at the Big Origin Star, a sudden piece of news disrupted all his plans.

A previously lost contact with Swarm Meteor has suddenly been reconnected.

During its initial flight, it collided with a piece of space dust weighing only a few grams, but the extremely high speed still caused serious damage to both parties involved in the collision.

The speck of dust shattered into even more pulverized dust, but the Swarm Meteor was also shattered into pieces by the impact.

A large cyst was decelerated by the impact and its flight path was changed before it was captured by the gravity of a passing comet.

The comet's main component was a large block of solid ice, and its surface even contained a considerable amount of gaseous water. This allowed the cyst tissues, which had lost their internal storage, to replenish their water supply and barely maintain a life form.

During its journey, the comet entered the network link range of a subsequent Swarm Meteor. Thus, the cyst tissue, which had been missing for decades, returned to the embrace of the Swarm.

Upon examination, the Insect Empress Egg inside the cyst were missing, but the Creep Seed were still present and in an activating state. However, the nearby Swarm Meteor were only second-generation, with an internal hydrogen-oxygen reaction system.

This propulsion system is still insufficient to enable the Swarm Meteor to move autonomously, and given its distance of one light-year, providing support is virtually impossible.

Fortunately, the comet contained a large amount of water, so Rowan ordered the Creep Seed to begin hatching. Using the comet as a base, they concealed themselves, maintained life, and then served as eyes and ears and network nodes for the Swarm, simply drifting around with the comet.

Originally, this was just a minor matter and not worth Rowan's attention. However, during a break from his studies, when he was bored, Rowan thought of looking at this cyst tissue to see what it had experienced during its years of disappearance, especially the impact. This was currently the only Swarm unit that had survived the impact at high speed.

Although only a portion of the Spore Sac remained, several observation devices were still attached to it, and they had been operating normally all these years. Rowan fiddled with it for a long time and finally retrieved its historical records.

This investigation revealed that an alien spaceship had once passed by the comet millions of kilometers away.

The surviving observation system on the Spore Sac is mainly Optical Observation, resembling a super-farsighted eye. Logically, at a distance of millions of kilometers, it should be practically unable to see anything.

But this alien spaceship was simply too dazzling.

Yes, it's dazzling.

It emits a massive amount of blinding light, like a miniature sun, making it difficult for observation systems to miss its presence.

Extremely surprised, Rowan urgently convened a meeting of the Swarm's Intellect. In addition to the "Visit" team that was already on standby, he also invited many other people from fields such as sociology and psychology to participate, managing to gather several thousand more Intellect. Including the members of the "Visit" team, the total number of Intellect approached 30,000, demonstrating the importance Rowan attached to this matter.

There's no way to ignore this; it's the first extraterrestrial intelligent civilization the Swarm has encountered. Judging from their spaceships capable of interstellar travel, their technological level is quite advanced.

Moreover, based on the video footage, it is highly likely that their technological level far surpasses that of the Swarm. After all, based on the observation distance of the Spore Sac and the size of the opponent's Luminescent Organ, the Swarm Intellect calculated that the opponent's spaceship was at least tens of kilometers in size and its flight speed was more than one-tenth the speed of light.

Although the Swarm can accelerate their spaceships to this range using either old-fashioned catapults or new Electromagnetic Megastructure launchers, that only applies to small Bio-ship.

The Swarm currently has no way to accelerate a spaceship as large as an alien civilization to that speed.

Moreover, judging from the footage, the spaceship appears to rely on its own propulsion system, which is completely different from the technology used by the Swarm, which relies on external forces for acceleration.

The Swarm's current Bio-ship, relying solely on their own electromagnetic propulsion systems, not only cannot reach such speeds, but also cannot even escape their own star system in terms of endurance.

The fact that the Spore Sac discovered the alien spacecraft in the void between two star systems suggests that the aliens originated from at least a nearby star system.

If it's a nearby star system, it's not so bad; but if they flew in from a distant galaxy, the problem will be much more serious.

However, judging solely from the size of the spaceship, its propulsion system, and its range, it's clear that the opponent's technology far surpasses that of the Swarm. If there's a generational gap between the two sides, the opponent could even crush the current Swarm with just this one spaceship.

This is not what Rowan wanted to see.