This Swarm Is Far Too Weak

"Sweet."

"Sour."

Lu Shang casually tossed the two fruits, patterned like silver ringed snakes, behind him.

Behind him lay a mountain of assorted food. Aside from buying toilet paper, Lu Shang had also purchased large quantities of alien food from Hathe.

With the swarm serving as a living food-safety tester, Lu Shang did not need to worry about which alien foods humans could eat and which they could not.

Why buy food?

Naturally, because Lu Shang had grown so sick of the food provided by the swarm that he wanted to vomit.

Although the swarm-provided food was highly nutritious and not particularly heavily flavored, nobody could stand eating the same food continuously for more than five months.

Even plain rice needed side dishes!

"Why does this smell like gasoline?" Lu Shang opened a canned container, and the scent drifting out made him frown.

"Can people really eat this stuff?"

Lu Shang shook his head and tossed the alien canned food aside.

Suddenly, Lu Shang froze. He had received a warning from the Nestworld swarm.

A large number of spacetime ripples had appeared in the airspace near Nestworld!

This was a spacetime phenomenon that occurred just before a warp bubble ended its faster-than-light travel!

One after another, colossal beasts between five and fifteen kilometers long abruptly appeared in Nestworld's orbit.

Their bodies were entirely covered in tough brown keratinous plating, and from the side, they were diamond-shaped.

Their bodies bore many inexplicable conical spikes and what appeared to be long tendrils. At the front of each beast was one or more pairs of structures resembling pincers.

The rear ends of the beasts were covered in spikes and what appeared to be air sacs. The air sacs rhythmically expanded and contracted, like the rising and falling chest of a breathing human.

Lu Shang was naturally all too familiar with these creatures. They were the Behemoth beasts of the Babel Swarm!

There were hundreds of them in all!

However, these were not Behemoth beasts under Lu Shang's control. His Behemoth beasts were still busy spreading swarm spores across other planets in the Galactic Alliance.

They finally came. Wiping out those thirty-seven fleets in one go wasn't for nothing.

Eliminating most of the Galactic Alliance's armed forces in the Bogu Grand Nebula meant that this region of space had entered a brief vacuum period.

Some of the swarm creatures that had been fleeing from the Galactic Alliance fleets' pursuit would inevitably gather around the Bogu Grand Nebula.

It was safe enough here for them to recuperate and rebuild their strength.

Therefore, Lu Shang did not need to search all over the galaxy for swarm overminds. He only needed to wait for them to come to him.

Now, the "guests" Lu Shang had been waiting for had arrived.

His swarm's research units finally had a source!

"Should I greet them first?" Lu Shang hesitated just as he was about to order every psionic brain on Nestworld to attack.

They were part of the same faction as him. Launching a sneak attack like this seemed rather improper.

Besides, he only wanted the other side's overmind genes to optimize the hive brains in his swarm. If the opposing overmind was willing to hand over its genes, there was no need for him to fight.

However, what the opposing overmind did the very next moment completely dispelled Lu Shang's unnecessary thoughts.

The overmind of the Behemoth beast swarm in orbit was releasing psionic signals, attempting to seize control of Nestworld's swarm!

Fortunately, Lu Shang had prepared his swarm in advance, but it was still enough to make him furious.

"Fuck me!" Lu Shang felt as though his goodwill had gone to the dogs.

Well, well! He had still been hesitating over whether to attack, yet the other side had struck first!

"You don't know what's good for you!" Lu Shang cursed, then turned and ordered the psionic brains on Nestworld. "All level-ten psionic units on Nestworld, listen up. Force that group of Behemoth beasts in space down here!"

[Understood.]

The swarm answered its overmind.

Vast psionic power spread out from beneath the swamps of Nestworld. The Behemoth beast swarm, which had been swaying through Nestworld's orbit, suddenly froze as one, like lively fish abruptly turned into ice sculptures.

Invisible psionic pressure bound the bodies of those colossal beasts tightly. No matter how they struggled, it was futile.

Although both the Behemoth beasts and the psionic brains on Nestworld possessed level-ten psionic power, there were only a few hundred of the former, while Nestworld had over two hundred thousand psionic brains.

Such a disparity in numbers turned the clash of psionic power into a one-sided crushing defeat.

Hundreds of Behemoth beasts wailed like falling sky whales as they crashed heavily into Nestworld's swamps, kicking up towering waves of rotting mud.

But that alone did not mean the battle was over.

Besides serving as the Babel Swarm's spaceborne biological vessels, the Behemoth beasts contained numerous incubation chambers, making each one a mobile giant hive.

After the Behemoth beasts were forcibly dragged from space to Nestworld's surface by overwhelming psionic power, the battlefield shifted from space to the ground.

Large numbers of swarm creatures burrowed out from the Behemoth beasts' bodies. Those swarm creatures, beyond Lu Shang's control, surged en masse toward the nearest hives.

Like a tide, they swiftly tore apart the hives drowned beneath their numbers.

In only a few minutes, relying on the fallen Behemoth beasts, they had occupied an area the size of half a small town.

Through the god's-eye view provided by the swarm under his command, Lu Shang could clearly see the extent of the territory occupied by the enemy swarm.

"What era is this? They're still using such an antiquated way of fighting..." Lu Shang yawned boredly, stretched out his hand, then clenched it into a fist.

"Psionic Grip."

The next moment, apart from the Behemoth beasts and the swarm creatures inside them, every swarm creature not under Lu Shang's control was compressed by overwhelming psionic power into tiny spheres the size of marbles.

Having psionic power meant he could do whatever he wanted!

Not convinced? Then use psionic power to defeat me!

It wasn't like I stopped you from using psionic power!

After marveling at how weak his opponent was, Lu Shang gave an order to his swarm's worker bees.

"Worker bees, go bring me the overminds of those Behemoth beasts."

Countless worker bees burrowed up from beneath the swamp, obeying Lu Shang's command and pouring into the Behemoth beasts, which were being held down by overwhelming psionic power.

Although there were still individual creatures inside those hostile Behemoth beasts stubbornly resisting, their resistance was no longer significant.

The Babel Swarm did not have the ability to create matter from nothing. Every bit of its stored matter was consumed when used.

Those Behemoth beasts had just incubated so many swarm creatures that a huge portion of their available matter reserves had been depleted. How could they possibly produce many more swarm creatures to resist?

As for the batches of resistance forces the enemy painstakingly incubated bit by bit, like squeezing toothpaste from a tube, they were utterly incapable of defeating Lu Shang's worker bees.

Because Lu Shang's worker bees knew how to call for backup.

The worker bees Lu Shang had ordered inside immediately reported any swarm creature they saw to the psionic network.

Then the psionic brains on Nestworld would immediately use psionic power to imprison the swarm creatures at those locations.

That was what unity was strength! What had those old Babel Swarm creatures with their fangs and claws ever amounted to?