The giant beast appeared

At the sight, a sense of defeat filled Chloe's heart. She knew her psionic talent fell short of Stars's, but she had never imagined the difference would be as vast as heaven and earth.

She shook her head hard, casting off her dejection. Chloe had to turn her attention back to the battlefield.

Even though the Swarm's surprise attack had thrown the beasts into chaos, the Beast Horde's overwhelming numerical advantage remained.

A magical beast resembling a white gorilla, eight meters tall, emerged from the Beast Horde. It raised its terrifying, enormous claws and directed the Beast Horde to surround the outnumbered Swarm.

The Beast Tide began to recover from its confusion after the white gorilla appeared. Led by the magical beasts, great numbers of wild beasts began to fight back, and the Swarm's casualties mounted.

Having torn a bloody mouthful from the Beast Tide, the Swarm immediately struck diagonally toward the Beast Horde's weak flanks. Since fighting on Creep allowed the Swarm to sense most battlefield information, Chloe chose the easiest point to break through. The Swarm swiftly punched through the Beast Tide and escaped the costly battle of attrition.

In this assault, the Swarm forces were like a black snake plunging savagely into a tender piece of flesh, gorging themselves before slipping back out. They struck once and withdrew, leaving far behind. Only the Swarm could have carried out such an exquisite attack and retreat.

"Honored Executor, we need to change our battle plan. I just probed with psionics. That enormous white gorilla is very likely the legendary magical beast, the Behemoth." During this attack, Stars had not only remained unscathed but also killed a High-Level Magical Beast.

She rode a Zergling at a charge while communicating with Chloe through the Swarm Network.

Even without Stars's probing, Chloe could sense how extraordinary that magical beast was. To her senses, its powerful psionics were like a vortex affecting the entire battlefield. In terms of magnitude, it would take a thousand High-Level Magical Beasts combined to match it.

Such a being could only be the Behemoth, the legendary magical beast that symbolized supreme strength. It did not look like this in human picture books. Here among the Beast Horde, it proved even stronger and more ferocious than the legends described.

Chloe's original plan had been to use the Creep Tumors here to try to annihilate or cripple this portion of the Beast Horde. Now it seemed she could only change her plan.

She would turn a grinding battle of annihilation into a mobile battle of attrition.

With her decision made, Chloe hesitated no longer. She quickly directed the Swarm army to fall back toward the four Creep Tumors.

The Creep Tumors played a crucial role in drawing attacks and inflicting casualties on the Beast Horde. Each swing of their terrifying spiked tentacles could kill or wound more than a dozen wild beasts.

With the Swarm troops holding the front earlier, they had been able to attack steadily without taking much damage. Now they had to face the Beast Horde's fury alone.

Some of the larger High-Level Magical Beasts rammed the Creep Tumors directly with their bodies. Stronger wild beasts also joined forces to grab the spiked tentacles, limiting the Creep Tumors' killing power.

Another Creep Tumor was buried beneath an enormous mass of crawling beasts. Their sharp fangs could not kill it quickly, but they could still inflict continuous damage.

The most terrifying of all was the Behemoth. Its eight-meter body stood a head taller than the Creep Tumors. It first slammed into one, wrenching most of the fleshy roots anchored deep underground out of the earth.

Then it raised its sharp claws and slashed down, cleaving an attacking spiked tentacle in two. It drove its other claw savagely into the Creep Tumor's flesh.

If the Creep Tumor had possessed vocal organs, it would surely have howled in agony.

At this rate, it was doubtful whether the four Creep Tumors could last even ten minutes. On their own, they seemed far too fragile against the Beast Horde's ferocious assault.

Chloe had thought the Creep Tumors could buy a little more time. She had not expected the situation to deteriorate so quickly and had no choice but to deploy her ambush force early.

The ten-thousand-strong Swarm army placed behind the Beast Horde well in advance began to move. Until then, they had lain quietly hidden in the soil beneath the Creep.

Chloe had intended to deploy them once the battle reached a stalemate, delivering a fatal blow to the Beast Horde from behind. But that plan had not accounted for a legendary magical beast like the Behemoth among them.

The ten thousand Swarm troops shook the dirt from their bodies together. Rather than forming their usual arrowhead formation, they spread into a rectangle to increase their frontage against the enemy.

The advantage was that their charge could inflict more damage. The disadvantage was insufficient penetrating power, making them easy for a numerically superior enemy to bog down.

But killing power was exactly what Chloe wanted now. Before the Beast Horde destroyed all the Creep Tumors, she sought to make the most of their effectiveness and inflict more casualties on the Beast Horde.

At the front, Chloe also combined her own Swarm with the troops Stars led, avoiding the Behemoth to strike the Beast Tide's weakest left flank.

When the Behemoth saw that the repelled Swarm actually dared to return, fury surged within it. It intended to advance and meet them, but the Creep Tumor seized the opportunity to wrap its other two spiked tentacles around its thick arms.

The entire Creep Tumor glowed green. The nutrient fluid inside it rapidly evaporated, increasing its strength. By overtaxing itself this way, its spiked tentacles briefly matched the Behemoth's strength.

The Swarm had always excelled at seizing the precise moment to strike. From front and rear, two Swarm forces numbering nearly sixteen thousand in total savagely bit into the Beast Horde's left flank in a pincer attack.

Large numbers of beasts were knocked flying or killed. The entire left flank of the Beast Horde was compressed like a balloon.

At the same time, all the Creep Tumors glowed green, overtaxing themselves to increase their strength. Their already terrifying spiked tentacles whipped through the air with such force that faint afterimages seemed visible.

This combination of blows threw the beasts on the left flank back into chaos. Great numbers were killed, and any High-Level Magical Beasts that tried to step forward and steady the Beast Horde were singled out for attack.

The entire Beast Horde began to show signs of collapse.

After two surprise assaults, the Beast Horde of sixty thousand had dwindled to fewer than forty thousand. The Swarm still had thirteen thousand combat troops. Together with the frenzied Creep Tumors, they began to close the gap in fighting strength.

The feeling of commanding vast armies on the battlefield and directing their movements filled Chloe with excitement.

In the military education she had received, the moment of engagement was when a commander was most powerless. Once the two armies had met and become locked in slaughter, separating them again was difficult.

At that point, the greatest emphasis was placed on maintaining formation and steady morale. As long as one side could keep its morale steady, the cruel, bloody battlefield would break the other.

The Swarm's way of waging war was entirely different from the human understanding of it. In the killing, the Swarm was savage, ruthless, and fearless, able to fight to the last moment; in its execution of warfare, its tactics were as precise as mathematical formulas in a textbook.

For Chloe as commander, all she had to do was convey her thoughts to the Swarm Network. With lines drawn by her hand across the virtual battlefield, a nearly perfect battle was carried out.