Familiar Things

Without the support of Ground-Based Artillery on Laze Planet, and with the Orbital Cannon almost entirely destroyed due to their slow movement, the Riken Race's firepower output has been reduced by more than half.

Without the advantage in output, the pressure on the Zerg's Ancient Class Swarm decreased significantly, their time to evade was shortened, and their firing frequency increased. Faced with the Swarm's fierce artillery barrage, the three fleets, which had previously only needed to focus on output, also started moving again, reducing their firing frequency. These chain reactions meant that the Swarm seemed to be putting the Riken Race on the defensive.

The commanders of the three fleets also realized this awkward situation. They could only hope that this was the Swarm's last desperate act.

Based on previous data analysis, the Swarm's current ammunition reserves are no longer sufficient to support such a high intensity of firepower.

As they had guessed, the Swarm departed from the exoplanetary belt without any resupply along the way. Even with the new tactics employed during their encounter with the Riken Race fleet, their metal reserves were still significantly depleted.

After such a long period of high-intensity firing, the reserves of metallic elements have been completely depleted.

However, the Riken Race fleet is currently at its limit. The defense system of the planet's orbit and surface has collapsed, and it can only barely maintain its strength by relying on the fleet's output.

But they are fighting on home ground, and theoretically, with the cover of Laze Planet and its satellites, they should be able to hold out until the Swarm forces run out of ammunition first.

However, they underestimated the Swarm's deployment on Laze Planet.

If the Riken Race knew exactly what the Swarm's life forms were, they might have already started fleeing.

Rowan's mastery of genetic mutation has elevated the Swarm's ability to expand its resources to a whole new level. In the past, even if the Swarm had gone to great lengths to send several Insect Empress Eggs to Laze Planet, they probably wouldn't have made much of a splash even after ten years.

But things are different now. As long as one Larval Form successfully breaks through the defenses, with continuous mutations, given enough time, there are as many Insect Empress units as there can be.

The Laze Planet was initially swarmed with countless Larval Form, and in order to speed up the process, the number of mutated Insect Empress later exceeded 100,000.

It's important to understand that before this, the Swarm had conquered the Origin and Proxima Centauri systems only had an Insect Empress number that was just over a million—the result of hundreds of years of development.

Now, it's equivalent to placing one-tenth of the Insect Empress of two star systems onto a single planet. You can imagine the power the Swarm would unleash.

Each Insect Empress is a swarm, and the hundreds of thousands of swarms scattered across the surface of Laze Planet have produced countless combat units over the past decade.

Even if each "Riken's Radiance" could perfectly destroy an Insect Nest, there would only be a little over a thousand of them. The number of Insect Nest they could destroy would be just a drop in the ocean compared to the total number of hives.

To the astonishment of all the members of the Riken Race, countless purplish-gray patches appeared on the Laze Planet, and they rapidly spread, expanded, and connected.

In a short period of time, they have turned a large part of Laze Planet into a purplish-gray color.

And this is even with the Swarm holding back.

The Swarm Blade have mastered Rowan's "holding back" strategy, and when the outcome of a battle is already decided, they will try their best to conceal their true strength and stats.

Yes, the outcome of the battle is now decided.

It's only a matter of time before the Swarm takes over Laze Planet. Now, all it takes is a little more "straw" to break the last Riken Race's will to resist.

On Laze Planet.

As the purple patches spread, the Riken Race found themselves in a predicament, unsure which area to bomb first, but they were about to experience true despair.

The purplish-gray Creep tissue constantly wriggled, and some fleshy tissues kept turning out from inside the Creep. Then, they continued to merge and transform, gradually taking shape.

Finally, their appearance settled on a pattern very familiar to the Riken Race.

These slender cylinders, once formed, are exactly the same as the Electromagnetic Cannon on the long-range Ancient Class.

Yes, they not only look exactly the same, but they also function exactly the same.

After all, Electromagnetic Cannon organs are components derived from Creep.

This scene actually occurred once before on planet T855 in the Proxima Star System, but at that time, because the Riken Race's moons around the planet had been cleared away, the Riken Race, who could only observe from a distance, only saw the entire T855 slowly change color, and did not see how the Electromagnetic Cannon on it appeared.

But it's okay, this time the distance is close enough, they'll definitely be able to see clearly.

"What's that? It looks familiar." A Riken Race observer looked at the surveillance footage in front of him and asked in confusion.

"It looks somewhat familiar, but I can't quite place where I've seen it before." Another Rickon was also puzzled. He frowned and thought hard. He seemed to be able to recall what it looked like right away, but he just couldn't quite put his finger on it.

"Do they look alike?" At this moment, another Rickon suddenly spoke up.

He pulled up a high-resolution image from a remote, Ancient Class and compared it to the cylinders on the Laze Planet's Creep.

"They're exactly the same."

"I have a bad feeling."

"Report to the captain immediately."

The observers were in a flurry of activity, but at least the information was relayed in time.

At the same time.

"General, electromagnetic strike detected, located below us!"

"What!?" Hamis, who was watching the situation on the front lines, was taken aback upon hearing this.

Those ranged Octopus Monster were all in front of their fleet, with Laze Planet below them, and what the hell was this attack coming from below?

Actually, the crew also thought the instrument had malfunctioned, since the surrounding area was filled with strong electromagnetic pulses, so it seemed reasonable for the data to be a bit problematic.

However, after checking several times, he found that the data was correct.

And at this moment, the information from the observers finally arrived.

"Take cover!" Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Hamis quickly ordered everyone to take cover immediately.

But it was too late, because the distance was simply too close; at that distance, the Electromagnetic Projectile would arrive almost instantly.

Moreover, because the fire was fired from below the fleet, the targets were all the relatively vulnerable hull sections of the ships. The damage caused by this attack was even greater than the results achieved by the long-range Ancient Class over several hours.

Of the entire First Fleet's thousand warships, nearly 200 had previously withdrawn from combat. Of the remaining 800-plus warships, more than 50 were directly destroyed in this attack, and over half of the warships suffered varying degrees of damage.

The Riken Race have never lost this many warships since the start of the war. Keep in mind that these were destroyed outright, not damaged and withdrawn from the battlefield. Destroying a warship with Electromagnetic Projectile that have been flying for more than ten minutes is no easy feat.

Moreover, if it weren't for the firing angle and the relatively small number of Electromagnetic Cannon that were initially produced, this round might have been able to wipe out more than half of the Riken Race warships.