The web maze

"Damn it," Chloe cursed involuntarily. She had left only three thousand combat bugs at the Hatchery and sent all the others out.

Moreover, these three thousand combat bugs were all Venomspiders, which were ill-suited to fast-moving assaults.

As luck would have it, she now had to rely on them to defend the Hatchery. Venomspiders excelled at fighting in complex terrain, and places like underground tunnels in particular allowed them to make better use of their fighting strength.

But the beast horde numbered fifty thousand, a numerical gap the Venomspiders could not overcome.

The purple spore sac began discharging large quantities of green nutrient fluid, and Stars, who had been sleeping inside it, slowly woke as well.

"Stars node, the Hatchery faces a crisis. Your research assistance task is temporarily suspended. The Executor orders you to link with the newly born Swarm units and block the magical beasts' attack." Before Stars had fully regained consciousness, the Hive Mind delivered the order into her mind.

With an effort, Stars gripped the protrusions on the spore sac with both hands and sat up. After sleeping in the nutrient fluid, her body did not feel tired; mentally, however, it was quite the opposite. Her mind felt extraordinarily heavy, and even her thinking was less sharp than usual.

This might have been an aftereffect of the Hive Mind's research on her. Only after recalling the information the Hive Mind had delivered twice more did she slowly understand what had happened.

Once she was sitting steadily, Stars released the protrusions and patted her cheeks, trying to make herself more alert with the blows. She had her own goal, and no matter how exhausting or difficult something was, she had to meet it head-on.

She had to prove her worth. Before the Overmind woke, she had to do everything she could to leave the Overmind with a better impression of her.

After Stars jumped out of the spore sac, the nutrient fluid on her body was quickly absorbed by her skin. At that moment, her body was as youthful and beautiful as a teenage girl's.

A tendril extended from the wall of flesh, holding a brand-new suit of chitin armor.

She had asked the Hive Swarm Consciousness to make it for her. This armor offered strong protection while remaining light and breathable, and it could also change in specific places at her will, such as growing bone blades from its arms.

She had liked it very much after using it once, and now she would wear this kind of armor into battle again.

On the way to the front line, the Hive Mind had already packaged detailed intelligence and sent it into her mind.

It included the beast horde in the underground tunnels, the Swarm army rushing back to reinforce them, and the various statistics of the new Swarm units under her command, the Venomspiders.

Stars truly had not expected so much to happen while she slept. Fortunately, after reviewing the Venomspiders' statistics, she gained some confidence in fighting within the narrow underground tunnels.

But the difficulty lay in using seven thousand Venomspiders to hold back a beast horde numbering as many as fifty thousand, including the Frost Serpent, for long enough.

"Shroud above, if I should fall in battle, I hope you will guide my soul to a quiet, peaceful eternal rest." After joining up with her four thousand Venomspiders, Stars prayed silently.

Stars was not the only one worried. Chloe was uncertain as well.

On the virtual battlefield, the vast red mass of the beast horde passed through two more junctions without taking a wrong turn. Thanks to the convenience of the underground tunnels, the beast horde had already covered half the distance to the Hatchery.

Compared with the beast horde on the surface, which stopped every so often to break the white solids off their bodies, the underground horde moved much faster. The Frost Serpent had frozen the Creep's slime, and the beasts could actually slide forward over it.

Choosing a suitable spot in the aboveground passage, Chloe ordered all the Venomspiders to build a defensive position there with their silk. Tough and sticky, the silk was an excellent material for impeding the enemy's movement.

Seven thousand Venomspiders spinning webs together worked with astonishing efficiency. Coordinated through the Swarm Network, they could cooperate without getting in one another's way to weave an enormous, intricate web maze. Soon, the white webs transformed the vast underground tunnel beyond recognition.

The webs filled the underground tunnels almost as quickly as the beast horde moved. By the time the beasts first saw the expanse of white webbing, the Venomspiders had already blocked every passage between the defensive position and the Hatchery with white silk.

Looking at the expanse of white silk ahead, the Frost Serpent fell silent. It knew this was spider silk, but it did not know why there was spider silk here. After asking the blue bird left behind by the Storm Dragonhawk and confirming that the direction was indeed correct, it decided to test it first.

As it happened, continuously using energy to freeze the slime on the ground had consumed a considerable amount of its stamina. Now it was the beast horde's turn to do the work.

Some strong, sturdy magical beasts with special abilities stepped forward. They tried to clear away the silk with Psionics or brute strength and open a path.

The silk's toughness exceeded every magical beast's expectations, including the Frost Serpent's.

At first, it had thought the magical beasts' exaggerated movements as they tore, broke, and burned the silk were a sign of laziness.

Only when it personally tried to coil its tail around a large mass of silk did it realize something was wrong.

Spider silk, which was generally understood to be very sticky but easy to snap, was extraordinarily tough. Even the serpent struggled to break it, as though it were pulling not on silk but on steel rebar.

Looking at the clump of silk stuck to its tail, the Frost Serpent's heart sank. It had used all its strength to tear away this tiny patch of web. How long would it take to destroy all of it!

This had to be the bugs' means of stalling them. Their Hatchery had to be up ahead, their most vulnerable place. They knew they could not stop the beast horde, which was why they had resorted to such a despicable method.

If the beast horde under its command was held up, destroying the webs in such an inefficient way, it would surely miss its best opportunity.

Fortunately, the underground tunnels were enormous. These strange webs could not completely fill the passages, and there were gaps between them.

As the beast horde's commander, the Frost Serpent naturally would not have to take such a risk itself. At its command, two hundred magical beasts led eighteen hundred beasts into the white maze, treading over the sticky webs.

The remaining magical beasts continued slowly destroying the tough webs bit by bit.

Twenty minutes passed, and the powerful magical beasts had destroyed only a hundred meters of webbing, widening a path that most of the beast horde could travel along unimpeded.

This was far too slow.

Just then, a somber atmosphere settled over the beasts at the front. They saw blood of many different colors on the formerly white webs. A battle had clearly taken place here.

An enormous black-furred gorilla felt around in a clump of white silk with its thick hands for a while, then discovered a severed arthropod limb.

This severed limb belonged to no magical beast or wild animal. It had obvious insect characteristics, bearing a peculiar resemblance to the bugs they had fought.

Terrifying memories began to resurface, and unease began spreading through the beast horde.