Tunneling Worm
"We've shown everything we needed to; now it's our turn to reveal our trump card."
Every battlefield is either evenly matched or at a disadvantage; there is no advantageous situation anywhere. If this continues, the second wave of war launched by the Swarm will likely end in failure once again.
Despite the unfavorable situation, Sarah, who was authorized as the supreme commander, remained calm because she had her own confidence.
On Laze Planet, some Ground-Based Artillery were damaged due to an insufficient number of Laser Defense Array. However, all of these damaged cannons were outside the protection range of the laser arrays, and with their destruction, the number of Laser Defense Array is now sufficient to protect all the remaining Ground-Based Artillery.
Therefore, the Ground-Based Artillery suffered minimal losses in the final rounds of long-range artillery fire from the Swarm's Ancient Class. Later, the introduction of the Orbital Defense Cannon successfully drew away the Swarm's long-range fire.
In this undisturbed environment, the Ground-Based Artillery poured its energy beams into the air, thoroughly enjoying itself.
But after Sarah gave the order, the Swarm, which had been secretly developing for more than ten years deep underground on Laze Planet, finally showed its power.
Back then Riken Race had over thirty Ground-Based Artillery bases, which turned into purple patches on the map after being attacked by the Swarm. After trying various methods to no avail, the Riken Race had no choice but to use Nuclear Bomb to wipe out the land.
The immense power of the new Nuclear Bomb vaporized the base, the Swarm units within it, and even an area several kilometers below the surface, into semi-circular craters.
Even after repeated failures in the encirclement and suppression of the remaining Swarm in the mountainous region, that complex mountainous area was blasted into a crater.
Afterwards Riken Race carefully inspected the planet and confirmed that no Swarm units remained before they began the reconstruction of Laze Planet.
To be honest, they were somewhat deceiving themselves. In those areas that were bombarded by Nuclear Bomb, because the time was short, the Creep did not penetrate very deeply and was directly evaporated by the hundreds of millions of degrees of heat.
However, countless Larval Form and Mature Form fighting in the mountainous region escaped after using Optical Camouflage, Riken Race, lacking effective means of reconnaissance of these small and medium-sized units, failed to detect them at all.
Not to mention that when the Swarm attacked the artillery bases scattered throughout Laze Planet, at least tens of thousands of Larval Form broke away from the army and hid along the way.
After burrowing underground, they did not extend towards the surface, but continued to descend.
Riken Race wanted to completely wipe them out, they would probably have to blow up an entire layer of Laze Planet. But such a massive project would require so many Nuclear Bomb that even filling the Riken Race' entire stockpile would be just a drop in the ocean.
Larval Form has at least a hundred Strain on its body, and each Strain can mutate into Creep Seed. After the Creep has developed for a period of time, it can mutate a part of its body tissue to produce Insect Empress.
Thus, thousands upon thousands of Swarm bases took root on Laze Planet. But they merely took root, not sprouted. To avoid attracting the attention of the Riken Race, all the bases were hidden deep underground, relying mainly on geothermal heat and radioactive materials to sustain their development.
But now it's time for these bases to sprout.
A New Species of Insect has been revealed to the world for the first time.
This insect is over fifty meters long and over three meters in diameter, resembling a giant earthworm magnified hundreds of times. Its mouthparts are covered with thousands upon thousands of sharp teeth arranged in parallel spirals, extending into the unseen depths of its body, like a dark abyss.
With each opening and closing of its mouthparts, whether it is soft and fine soil or extremely hard minerals and metals, they are all shredded by its sharp teeth like tofu and then swallowed into its stomach.
It has more than ten huge grinding organs inside its body, like a giant blender, which can grind all the things it swallows into powder.
These fragments then enter special transport pipes, where a special secretion is produced inside. As the fragments pass through, the secretion mixes with the liquid, forming a viscous, paste-like liquid.
Their bodies are covered with a layer of hard horny armor. This armor is not horny but very smooth, allowing them to move freely underground without worrying about unnecessary damage.
These horny armors are covered with holes about five centimeters in diameter. These holes are connected to the delivery channels for the viscous liquid, allowing the liquid to be drained from the body.
When the insect begins its work, it devours all the soil and rocks in front of it, which are then converted into a viscous liquid inside its body and transported to the surface.
Between the insect's fleshy structure and its outer keratinous armor, there is a layer of air sac tissue. When these air sac tissues are inflated, the insect's body is no longer soft, but expands into a round shape, like a long stick.
As the insect swells, it forcefully compresses the soil around its body. At the same time, the viscous liquid is expelled through the numerous pores all over its body, smearing it onto the compacted tunnel walls as the insect passes through them.
After being expelled from the body and combined with the soil and rocks, these liquids quickly seep into the soil and rocks, and solidify and bond within one minute, thus providing secondary reinforcement to the passage.
This new insect, called the Tunneling Worm, can dig a sturdy tunnel hundreds of kilometers long and three meters in diameter underground every hour. With it, the Swarm's assault capability has increased many levels compared to the past when Worker Bee dug and reinforced the tunnels bit by bit.
"Team leader! Come quick, the instruments have detected some abnormal data!" A Riken Race suddenly shouted in a compartment of the underground nuclear power plant.
Upon hearing the shouts, the other Rickons in the cabin rushed over.
There were only a dozen or so Rickans in this compartment, who were some engineering and security personnel. At this time, the two races were engaged in a war in space, and the Laser Defense Array and Ground-Based Artillery had been firing non-stop since the start of the war.
The underground nuclear power plant that supplies them with energy is naturally of paramount importance in such a high-intensity war. However, since Laze Planet is the territory of the Riken Race, and during the war, the troops were concentrated on the main battlefield, so there were not many guards, but the majority of them were engineers maintaining the nuclear power plant.
After all, no one wants a ceasefire to occur during a war due to equipment problems on their own side.
Although there are relatively few guards, all the necessary early warning equipment is still available. Because it is located hundreds of meters underground, the main monitoring is of the access routes and the surrounding geological environment.
At the beginning of the war, the Laser Defense Array and Ground-Based Artillery were all operating at full power, especially the energy-intensive Laser Defense Array. At that time, alarms were constantly going off in the nuclear power plant, and maintenance engineers were running around checking and maintaining parts and equipment everywhere, which is how the nuclear power plant was able to maintain stable operation.
But if that output power continues for another hour or two, the nuclear power plant might shut down.
Fortunately, the Swarm's artillery fire later shifted its target, and the Laser Defense Array no longer needed to operate. Based solely on the energy consumption of the Ground-Based Artillery, the nuclear power plant only needed to achieve 50% of its full operating capacity to maintain the supply.
With some free time, everyone gathered in the duty room.
They were located deep underground, and during the war, they were forbidden from going to the planet's surface. Therefore, they could not directly observe the battlefield situation and could only learn about the war through videos played by the accompanying functional ships.
However, due to the intense battlefield environment, there are not many good camera positions to film the battlefield situation, and computing power must be prioritized for the needs of the front-line battlefield. Therefore, they currently only have some voice signals coming in.