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Rowan saw the Ancient Spaceship, which the Riken Race called a "treasure," through Claire's perspective. Although it was only a little over 500 meters long, its internal technology had reached another level. Most importantly, the spaceship's main engine was a gravity-based warp drive, and the engine technology that the Riken Race had cracked was only for the engines of the fighter jets it carried.

Meanwhile, a third party is rushing here from outside the system. However, judging from their engine technology, they could not possibly be the creators of the Ancient Spaceship. If they were using warp drives, their speed should have exceeded the speed of light, and the Overseer wouldn't even be able to detect them.

Not only that, they seemed to be senior brothers from the same school of the Riken Race.

Thinking about it this way, it's not impossible. If, as Rowan speculated, the Chess Player really did place a spaceship in the native star system of each intelligent race, then this new force is likely an earlier civilization than the Riken Race. Consequently, they would have acquired the Chess Player' spaceships earlier, had a higher level of understanding of the spaceships, and thus gained more.

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed to be the truth. Rowan also had some guesses about why the Chess Player's ship was not found in the Origin Star System.

It takes hundreds of millions of years for a single-celled organism to evolve into a higher animal, and for a higher animal to evolve from a beast into a civilized race, it takes anywhere from millions to hundreds of millions of years.

The Rat-folk on Origin Star, who originally ate the lowest level of food Fat-Tail Rat, have evolved to their current state over at least a million years through natural evolution.

However, with Rowan's intervention, they completed the journey in just a few hundred years.

The spaceship Chess Player, discovered by the Riken Race, has been buried there for tens of thousands of years, according to relevant tests. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Riken Race had already evolved to the point of being able to make fire by friction and forming a tribe.

If the Chess Player deployed their spaceships only after their native races had evolved to this level, then the Rat-folk on Origin Star might not have even had time to deploy them before they had already emerged victorious. They might be completely baffled by this situation.

This makes Rowan even more cautious, because the Rat-folk's evolution speed is far too abnormal. If the Chess Player have been monitoring this star field, the current situation here is likely to attract their interest and draw their attention.

Being the focus of attention for a force whose technology far surpasses one's own is not a good thing.

However, Rowan Wen reconsidered and felt that some of his guesses were still slightly flawed.

He had previously confirmed the existence of Chess Player because he discovered a third-party surveillance camera hidden near the battlefield. Now, however, he doesn't know the new faction's level of surveillance technology. Therefore, he cannot rule out the possibility that the surveillance camera belongs to this new faction.

If that's the case, then whether the Chess Player actually exist becomes unknown, and all previous speculations have become nothing more than a battle of wits with thin air.

However, the Riken Star System is not of great importance to the Swarm, and it wouldn't matter if all their forces there were lost. Therefore, they can attack or defend as they please, and their autonomy is very high.

The Swarm should just observe for now; the arrival of a new third party will inevitably bring more information, which should help him analyze more details.

The infiltration operations by the Riken Race have also temporarily ceased. Even if Antonio remains in the position of Speaker until he dies, it will only last for a little over a hundred years at most.

This only slightly affected his plans, but since the Swarm Network was upgraded again, Rowan's survival ability has been further enhanced, and he has gradually changed his original concept of time. For the immortal species, seizing every minute is meaningless.

Six months later, unexpectedly, even without the Swarm actively pushing things along, the internal situation of the Riken Race had already deteriorated to a considerable degree through natural decay.

During one of Antonio's public speeches, a large number of angry ordinary people in Ricken stormed the speech team and even clashed with Antonio's security team and guards.

During the evacuation, Antonio's airship was hit by weapons from an unknown force, and he died after crashing. Things always happen in such a dramatic way; Rowan swore he really wasn't responsible. Although there were many Intellect lurking within the opposition, Rowan had already ordered a halt to all radical actions after detecting the impending entry of a third party.

However, it doesn't matter. The impact of Antonio's death was smaller than imagined. This Speaker, who served for more than fifty years and broke with Ricken tradition, disappeared silently into the annals of history, fully demonstrating that the world will continue to function as usual regardless of who is gone.

The new speaker was elected in a flash. He was Mr. Milton, who had participated in the high-level closed-door meetings. He was originally one of the most promising members of parliament to succeed Antonio, and his rise to power was not surprising to Ricken.

Milton is currently a natural Reacon, not Swarm Intellect in disguise.

In fact, Rowan could force a candidate with both Intellect ability to take the position, but considering the upcoming third-party contact and for various reasons, it's better to choose a natural candidate. As for the future, we can decide based on the situation.

Anyway, this Milton is from Grandpa Chloe's faction, so it's possible to forcibly convert him into Intellect at a crucial moment. His clone is already lying beneath his mansion, and during the seven days he was gone, the clone will exercise some of his powers.

As for the user of the clones, Rowan already had a good candidate in mind: the former Lord Antonio. As one of the second batch of people injected with the Life-Extending Serum, Rickon's body had already been modified over the years. At the moment of his death, his spiritual body was forcibly pulled into the Swarm Network by Rowan for harvesting.

It's safe to assume that the Intellect that inherited Antonio's memories could easily impersonate his "former" friends and rivals. After all, as the saying goes, the person who knows you best is your enemy.

With the new speaker in office and the Swarm refraining from any aggressive actions—even their routine displays of force on the Riken Mother Planet ceasing—the emotions of the Riken population gradually stabilized, and conflicts decreased, especially with fewer instigators.

However, many non- Intellect officers were very puzzled by the Swarm's behavior, and they couldn't understand what had changed the Swarm's "routine".

In their view, the only major event recently was the power shift within Ricken. Ricken connected the two events and came to a chilling guess: the Swarm had driven this change.

Even Speaker Antonio may have been killed by the Swarm, and to be even bolder, the new Speaker Milton may even be a spy for the Swarm.

With such conviction, even the opposition figures who had personally taken action almost believed the claim.

However, reality quickly refuted these speculations, and all of Rickon knew the reason why the Swarm had stopped.