Gathering

Finally, after nearly a month, the commanders of every race in the alien Coalition Army had all arrived. In a situation like this, everyone valued their lives, and no one tried anything special.

The Yuntu Clan's flagship was enormous, its disc-shaped hull nearly five kilometers in diameter. With all that space, and as the command flagship, its interior decorations and layout naturally differed from those of ordinary warships.

At the same time, it had larger and more numerous crew quarters. This allowed the commanders of the various races who had come here, along with their attendants, to all receive suitable rooms.

The Zerg's "hospitality" left the aliens unable to understand why the Zerg were doing this, but preferential treatment usually meant either that they wanted something or that they did not wish to further escalate the conflict.

As a result, their chances of survival increased considerably, and the various races relaxed quite a bit. What they failed to notice, however, was that at night, a faint mist seeped into their rooms from nowhere before quickly disappearing.

The sleeping aliens fell into an even deeper slumber, while those standing night watch soon failed to hold out and drifted into dreams as well. At that moment, vines emerged from concealed cracks, burrowed into their bodies, and swiftly altered something within them.

Although this kind of direct-interface modification was somewhat crude, it could greatly reduce the time needed to turn the target organism into a node marker.

When Malin finally appeared again two days later, many of the invited commanders from the various races had already become "one of their own," turning the meeting into what was practically a performative "family gathering."

Maintaining the Zerg's usual direct style, Malin offered neither hypocritical pleasantries nor mockery of the enemy after a desperate counterattack. She