Reality Was Cruel

As the leaping biological swarm formed by the Collectors clashed with the Zerg swarm, the Kessians on the planet were still utterly bewildered.

It was not that the Kessian leadership was a bunch of incompetents. Everything had simply happened too suddenly, too quickly, and with far too little intelligence for them to draw any conclusions.

From their perspective, a string of radio messages written in multiple language systems had suddenly begun broadcasting across all frequencies from the Zerg-occupied territory beyond the protective barrier.

While the barrier could block harmful high-energy electromagnetic waves, harmless electromagnetic waves could still pass through.

At the time, they had assumed the Zerg intended to use this method to bypass the barrier and infiltrate the area within it.

They had only recently received reports that the Zerg had mastered a way to crack their camouflage colors. There was no guarantee that what had happened in Zerg-occupied territory was not another Zerg conspiracy.

Then, just as they had expected, the Zerg reacted.

Yet at the same time, their reaction exceeded all expectations. It was not the ground swarm that responded, but the space swarm in nearby orbit.

The swarm vanished from nearby orbit!

Objects could not simply disappear for no reason. The Kessians, who had gained at least a rudimentary understanding of the Spirit Domain, knew that the Zerg swarm had jumped elsewhere through it.

In the original space battle, the Zerg had used Spirit Domain jumps to force the Kessian fleet into extremely close boarding actions and hand-to-hand combat, leading to their total annihilation.

There was only one possible reason for the Zerg space swarm to make a Spirit Domain jump: some factor had forced it to do so.

The Kessians were deeply uneasy, because the only possibility they could think of was that the Zerg