The smile vanished from Lin Cuo's face.
Kallen had just cleared the last batch of Tank-class from both sides of the road and was preparing to move her machine into the temporary safe zone established by the imperial armored forces when she heard the Regent behind her, who had been spouting nonsense moments earlier, suddenly swear.
"Damn it, we're still too late."
"Too late for what? Didn't the convoy carrying the wounded up ahead already get through?"
"Not the convoy, Kallen. The Hive. That thing has already started working for real."
The system immediately unfolded a new phase description.
[BETA hive: First Phase.] [Underground reactor: initial installation complete.] [Energy and material collection network: established.] [Basic production sequence: activated.] [Units currently available for sustained production: Tank-class, Warrior-Class, Laser-Class.] [Primary resource inputs: surface carbon-based biomass, underground minerals, reclaimed organic matter.] [Area within a thirty-kilometer radius of the landing site: vegetation destruction has reached fifty percent.] [Warning: the Landing Unit in this world has demonstrated preemptive adaptation to human military technology.] [Conventional Hive growth stages can no longer accurately predict its production efficiency or unit composition.]
Lin Cuo quickly brought up the earlier ground reconnaissance images. Northeastern Persia had never been densely vegetated, but large stretches of farmland, orchards, shrubs, and planted forests still lined its oases, irrigated areas, town outskirts, and mountain valleys. Those places were now losing their original colors at a rate visible to the naked eye.
Once the BETA reactor began operating, the underground material collection network kept extending outward. The remaining surface plants, crops in the fields, animal carcasses left by the war, and even human remains that had not been collected in time were all being delivered by executor units into the material processing system taking shape.
More troubling still, the Laser-Class had already entered