In fact, the Beast Horde had no need to be so terrified. Stars could no longer unleash a second Psionics Shock. Sweat drenched her; successfully releasing a Psionics Shock containing the mental power of four thousand combat bugs had drained every last bit of her mental strength.
The heat radiating from her entire body was visible to the naked eye. Her long golden hair clung to her body with sweat, and her small mouth stretched as wide as it could as she kept gulping fresh air.
To keep her from dying of overheating, the chitin armor protecting her instantly burst into fragments. The enhanced Zergling beneath her placed her, as naked as a newborn, onto the Creep to cool down.
The Creep also rapidly secreted mucus, wrapping every part of Stars except her head.
Only after she was fully wrapped did Stars begin to recover from her open-mouthed gasping.
Great power inevitably came at a great cost.
In truth, even Chloe was moved by Stars' determination and success. She had put her life on the line to prove that her plan was feasible.
That Psionics Shock had also been highly effective. For the time being, the magical beasts would not dare to keep burning the Creep.
As Chloe looked at Stars wrapped in Creep, a tube had already grown from the Creep and was feeding her nutrient solution. The Hive Mind told Chloe that Stars would need at least three hours to recover fully.
Stars' plan was indeed good, and the Psionics Shock was indeed powerful, but the interval between casts was a little too long. Besides, who could guarantee that Stars would successfully construct the spell next time?
Everything had come back to square one. They had to send the Swarm charging into the Beast Horde and eliminate those High-Level Magical Beasts capable of producing fire, no matter the cost.
"Executor, there is no need to attack. The Stars node's demonstration was not a one-time occurrence. I recorded the thought patterns and mental fluctuations within her brain. I can replicate the Stars node's attack." The Hive Mind's voice always managed to bring Chloe pleasant surprises.
"However, because I have not yet deciphered the secrets of Psionics, I still cannot control it. You will therefore have to control its release, Executor."
"Me? Can I do it?" Before the Hive Mind, Chloe finally set aside her pride and revealed her lack of confidence.
"You do not need to do much. Simply do as you would when releasing an ordinary Psionics Shock, the kind you are most familiar with. Leave everything else to me. Even failure does not matter. I can bear the cost of the psionic backlash."
The Hive Mind's emotionless voice sounded so dependable.
For advanced civilizations, some things really could be learned with a single glance. Calling it a Sharingan would not have been an exaggeration.
After carefully discussing the release of Psionics Shock with the Hive Mind, Chloe was convinced that its words were true, and an effective plan formed in her mind.
A portion of the Swarm army scattered, digging holes in the ground in perfect unison to set up an ambush. Once the Swarm had hidden, the Creep secreted more mucus to cover the soil.
The remaining main force returned to the passage to await orders.
Only a short while later, a squad of flying magical beasts appeared in the sky. They were the Beast Horde's scouts.
At the same time, flying magical beasts and High-Level Magical Beasts were dispatched in a circle around the Beast Horde. Their task was to determine who had unleashed that extremely long-range Psionics Shock and where it had come from.
The Frost Serpent's face had already been gloomy. Now it was as dark as a block of thousand-year-old ice.
If the Beast Horde fought enemies they could see, they could withstand considerable casualties. Their enemies could kill them, but they could kill their enemies too, giving them an outlet for their anger.
Being killed by something unknown without any ability to resist, however, was something no magical beast could easily accept. It would shatter their morale.
Squad after squad of flying magical beasts went out and returned, yet their reports were all the same: they had found nothing. The entire area was covered in that irritating mucus. Even magical beasts with exceptionally keen eyesight could not see what lay beneath it.
"Mucus! Mucus! Why is this stuff so troublesome?" the Frost Serpent complained incessantly. The problem had come full circle. Those damned bugs were probably hiding somewhere in this vast sea of mucus.
Finding them required burning away the mucus, but burning the mucus might provoke another extremely long-range Psionics Shock.
After thinking for a while, the Frost Serpent came up with a solution: use only a small number of High-Level Magical Beasts to burn away the mucus slowly.
The flying magical beasts would heighten their vigilance, and the Beast Horde would prepare as well. The moment an unusual target appeared on the mucus, the Beast Horde would swarm it and destroy it.
When several High-Level Magical Beasts began burning the mucus, something did indeed change deep within it. Some bugs capable of firing steel needles crawled out.
The positions where these bugs appeared almost encircled the Beast Horde. There were roughly three or four thousand of them in total. Although they looked numerous, they still paled in comparison to the Beast Horde.
So that attack really did come from these wretched bugs. Now that I've lured them out, I can't let them escape, the Frost Serpent thought viciously.
To spare the flying magical beasts any losses, the Frost Serpent did not have them attack. Instead, it ordered them to guide the Beast Horde into several groups, each entering the mucus to fight the bugs.
As long as they could find the bugs, things would be easy. They had eighty thousand beasts on their side. The bugs had already lost plenty fighting the big fellow, so they surely could not muster enough strength now to confront the Beast Horde head-on.
Ants and bees reproduced quickly, but producing each offspring still took time.
Seeing the bugs emerge, the Frost Serpent breathed a sigh of relief. As long as they could fight the bugs, a battle of attrition would do. Its fear was that the bugs might possess a means of wearing them down from afar, gradually eroding the Beast Horde's numbers and will.
The Needle Crawlers had not appeared alone. Alongside them were melee Zerglings. They all tried to retreat when they saw the Beast Horde, but flying magical beasts were guiding the beasts from overhead. Four legs certainly could not outrun wings.
With no other choice, the bugs made contact with the Beast Horde after retreating some distance, and the fighting began. A dozen or so battlefields, large and small, spread out around the Beast Horde.
Although the Beast Horde held a considerable numerical advantage on every battlefield, their casualty ratios looked poor. Where they fought well, with powerful High-Level Magical Beasts holding the field, they managed a two-to-one exchange ratio. The groups short on magical beasts were doing well if they could maintain a four-to-one ratio.
The Frost Serpent began blaming the Storm Dragonhawk. According to the information it had relayed, the casualty ratio on the big fellow's side had not been this outrageous.
The bugs don't even have those giant towers of flesh helping them! Could my command ability actually be worse than the big fellow's? The Frost Serpent began to doubt itself.
In fact, the underlying reason was very simple: the scale of the engagements had shrunk.
The Beast Horde could not bring their greatest advantage, their numbers, to bear. Moreover, in terms of command, the Beast Horde relied on swarming forward in headlong charges, while the Swarm relied on the Swarm Network's micromanagement, precise down to every movement.
At a smaller scale, Swarm squads had more room for tactical control, while the force of the Beast Horde's charges grew correspondingly weaker.
There was another factor: many of the beasts were still heavily coated in hardened Creep mucus, which drained their stamina and made their movements slow and sluggish.
Before you continue