A devastating blow

On such a complex battlefield, the Swarm could execute front-and-rear pincer attacks, flank attacks, and mass charges that struck once before pulling away. These exceeded the limits of organization of every human army; they simply could not pull them off.

On a vast battlefield, a single person was insignificant. He could not possibly receive information in time and execute orders precisely. Anyone brave enough to step onto the battlefield and fight to the end was already a fine soldier.

For the Swarm, by contrast, fighting to the end was merely the most basic requirement.

The Swarm Network united every independent Swarm unit into a single whole. Every bug was equal, and all of them served the whole known as the Swarm.

They lived together, lived and died together, and evolved together. Unity and solidarity defined the Swarm's organizational structure, rather than a simple, singular, top-down hierarchy.

"We can win!" After once again gaining a profound appreciation of the Swarm's strength, Chloe unconsciously murmured to herself.

The Beast Tide, composed of almost all the beasts and magical beasts in the Death Forest, looked immensely powerful and unbeatable. But the Swarm would defeat them with even greater strength.

The battle entered a grinding phase, with the Swarm slaughtering the beasts at an extremely favorable exchange ratio.

The Behemoth could not tolerate this outcome. Rage filled its heart, and it ignored the bloody gashes the spiked tentacles left across its body. With a furious roar, it seized the Creep Tumor in both hands and heaved, lifting it just as Lu Zhishen had uprooted a weeping willow.

The fleshy roots buried deep underground could not withstand such tremendous force. One after another, they were pulled out and snapped. After the last fleshy root broke, the Creep Tumor's spiked tentacles twisted desperately a few more times, inflicting as many scratches as possible before drooping.

Copious amounts of blood-red fluid poured from the bottom of the Creep Tumor. It was dead.

A furious roar echoed across the battlefield. The Behemoth had not yet finished venting its rage. It raised the broken, dead Creep Tumor in its hands and hurled it deep into the Swarm. The enormous Creep Tumor flew through the air, casting a shadow of death over the ground before crashing into the Swarm.

Although the Hive Swarm Consciousness had calculated and prepared for this in advance, the attack covered too wide an area. On top of that, the tremendous force sent the Creep Tumor rolling several times after it hit the ground. This single blow cost the Swarm over two hundred units.

Chloe, who had been brimming with confidence just moments earlier, turned gloomy again. How could they kill such a terrifying Legendary Beast? Its combat power had been freed up, and the Swarm no longer had the strength to annihilate a beast horde with a Legendary Beast among its ranks.

The order to retreat was executed without hesitation. Even if the bugs on the front line could have claimed another life with just one more swing of their bone blades, they immediately withdrew their blades and began retreating upon receiving the Swarm Network's orders.

To put it simply, the Swarm attacked as swiftly as fire and retreated as swiftly as the wind.

After its decisive retreat, the Swarm had eleven thousand Warrior Bugs remaining. By the time the last Creep Tumor covering the retreat was toppled, only a little over thirty thousand of the sixty thousand pursuing beasts remained.

Fewer than fifteen hundred High-Level Magical Beasts, the most capable fighters among the magical beasts, remained.

A human army would have collapsed long ago after suffering such a devastating blow, but the Behemoth's presence kept the beast horde in order.

With its order maintained, the beast horde could immediately pursue the Swarm. Yet the successive battles had already exhausted their stamina. Even High-Level Magical Beasts were flesh and blood; they needed food and rest.

Fortunately, the ravaged battlefield was littered with corpses, allowing the exhausted beasts to eat something and recover their strength.

Then something happened that surprised the entire beast horde. Although the battle had lasted only two hours, most of the corpses on the ground had already begun to decay.

An unknown force softened the corpses, turning them into something like water. Only those piled on top of other corpses remained relatively intact.

Although magical beasts possessed intelligence, they could only understand things within the bounds of their common knowledge. They lacked the relevant knowledge to understand anything beyond that.

With no other choice, the beast horde could only eat the corpses that had not yet liquefied. They also wanted to taste the dead Zerg units, only to discover that they could not get their teeth into them at all.

For instance, a Zergling's exterior was covered in a chitinous carapace that ordinary beasts could not bite through. Even if they did, the inside was filled with muscles and nerves as tough as steel reinforcing bars. The flesh was very hard, not only unpleasant to eat but prone to getting stuck between their teeth.

This was, in fact, another demonstration of the Swarm's tremendous achievements in genetic technology. Even the simplest bug unit had no superfluous organs, and every muscle was exquisitely designed to achieve the best possible effect.

Through the Creep, Chloe could sense the beast horde's condition and even deduce what they were doing. When she discovered that they were eating and resting, she almost laughed aloud.

No form of existence could defeat the Swarm in a contest of attrition. The Creep's digestive function was inferior to that of the Digestive Cavity and less efficient as well. It had to break down food on the spot, then transport the energy obtained from digesting it back to the Hatchery.

But on a battlefield of this scale, that function was very important. While the beast horde was dying every moment, the Swarm was growing stronger every moment.

The more than ten thousand Warrior Bugs it had lost would soon be absorbed by the Creep, and eight thousand brand-new Warrior Bugs would hatch.

Moreover, there were still quite a few unhatched eggs in the cavern beneath the Hatchery. At this rate of losses, the Beast Tide probably would not even exhaust those eggs.

In terms of energy acquisition, the successive battles had brought the Swarm abundant gains. Although seven Creep Tumors had been toppled, the Creep would not disappear so quickly. It could remain for at least three more days before slowly withering.

The vast number of beast corpses on the Creep was the greatest gain. Such a brutal war was far more efficient than hunting at a slow pace. This single day's results could match an entire month of the Swarm's gains.

So, in fact, the Swarm had already won.

The beast horde's stupidity lay in choosing to fight the Swarm on the Creep. In the Swarm's memories, even enemies with steel fleets and steel battle suits were cautious about choosing to engage the Swarm on the Creep.

Even if they intended to set foot on the Creep, they would first burn it away with flames.

The beast horde clearly did not know this. The moment they stepped onto the Creep, they stepped toward defeat.

Meanwhile, the eighty thousand beasts Chloe had left alone on the other side also ran into trouble. The slime formed by the Creep accumulated in ever-greater quantities and began to congeal and harden.

Many beasts and magical beasts were hampered by it and struggled to advance. None of the magical beasts had anticipated that the sticky slime on the ground would be so troublesome. Some of the cleverer magical beasts raised their heads and looked in the direction the slime extended. It was still boundless, merging with the sky.

These magical beasts began to feel lost. Could they really defeat these bugs by choosing to launch a Beast Tide?