I Am The Swarm

What Luo Wen didn’t know was that the massive fireball was a small asteroid over ten kilometers in diameter. The smaller fireballs trailing behind it were meteors it had captured while wandering through the cosmos.

Now, the asteroid and its entourage had arrived at this planet.

The asteroid’s “followers” were less concerning. As they passed through the atmosphere, most disintegrated and failed to cause significant damage to the planet.

The asteroid, however, was a different story. Traveling at over 70,000 kilometers per hour and blazing with light and heat, it slammed into the surface.

Upon impact, the asteroid exploded, most of it vaporized instantly. The energy released was equivalent to the simultaneous detonation of millions of nuclear bombs.

The shockwaves radiated outward from the point of impact, sending massive rock fragments hurtling into the sky and triggering catastrophic tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions.

Within minutes, areas thousands of kilometers away were affected.

Unfortunately, Luo Wen was not far from the impact site. Despite having fled to a depth of several hundred meters underwater and continuing to dive deeper, his location remained within the core blast zone.

The shockwave instantly stripped away hundreds of meters of seawater. Before the water could travel far, it was vaporized. Though Luo Wen’s defenses were formidable, they were utterly ineffective against this apocalyptic force.

Even the heat-resistant nanomaterials in his mantis shrimp-like appendages extended his survival by only 0.01 seconds before he, too, was vaporized.

As the explosion hurled rocks skyward, they began to rain down as fiery meteors across areas over a thousand kilometers away. Any lifeforms that had survived the initial blast were now pummeled by this infernal barrage, many crushed to death.

The asteroid’s effects continued to spread. The dust and debris thrown into the atmosphere began to blanket the planet, blocking sunlight and darkening the skies. The once-brilliant Milky Way was now obscured by a suffocating haze.

The friction within the dust clouds generated intense heat, igniting wildfires worldwide and incinerating vast swaths of life. Burning rocks continued to rain down, and tsunamis swallowed the land.

Yet this was merely the beginning of the disaster.

After the explosions subsided, the molten rock from the impact covered an area spanning thousands of kilometers. Surface temperatures, initially exceeding tens of thousands of degrees, gradually dropped to around 300 degrees Celsius but remained unbearably high for months.

Life in the surrounding region was utterly unsustainable. Even creatures that escaped the initial devastation could not endure such hostile conditions.

Other parts of the world fared little better. The atmospheric dust prevented sunlight from reaching the surface. Plants that had miraculously survived the wildfires could no longer photosynthesize and began to wither.

As temperatures plummeted due to the lack of sunlight, frost blanketed the land outside the impact zone. Large herbivorous dinosaurs, particularly those requiring substantial amounts of food, began to perish en masse. Without herbivores to sustain them, carnivorous species soon followed into extinction.

Only a handful of lifeforms, those sheltered deep underground, managed to survive.

Luo Wen, who had been vaporized, entered a state of confusion. Remarkably, he had not died.

His consciousness had appeared within the Swarm Network.

Luo Wen couldn’t feel his body anymore. That was hardly surprising—after all, it had been vaporized. Being able to feel it would have been more perplexing.

After a brief adjustment, he realized he had become a “network being.” Except for the lack of a physical form, everything else felt nearly the same as before.

Just as he usually accessed the Swarm Network, Luo Wen could still sense its nodes. Though the number of nodes in his mental space was rapidly dwindling, he could use his consciousness to descend upon surviving Swarm entities. Even if his host body died, his consciousness could return to the network.

Did this mean that as long as the Swarm Network existed, he would not perish? Despite the ongoing apocalypse, extinguishing the Swarm seemed nearly impossible.

Take the Fungal Carpet, for instance. Its adaptability was unparalleled, thanks to the fusion of countless genes. Unless the entire planet was reduced to dust, the Fungal Carpet was sure to endure.

Moreover, the large fungal clusters on the carpet also possessed node identities. As long as these clusters persisted, the Swarm Network would remain operational. Did this imply that Luo Wen’s consciousness could exist indefinitely?

Whether this was true would require time to confirm. Still, discovering this hidden ability was an unexpected boon, though Luo Wen would have preferred not to learn about it in such a way.

For a brief moment, Luo Wen had genuinely believed he was dead.

Since the Swarm had taken control of the continent and life had stabilized, Luo Wen often used consciousness descent to perform tasks in other Swarm bodies. Direct action, especially personal hunting, had become exceedingly rare.

Now that he had lost his physical body, it seemed not to matter much in practice. Yet the situation felt undeniably strange.

His body had contained the innate talents of the Iphieash. Luo Wen wasn’t sure what his current state represented, but he was certain the Iphieash’s predecessors had never encountered anything like this.

After all, the Swarm Network was a unique mutation of his.

After a brief moment to collect himself, Luo Wen began examining the Swarm’s current state. All nodes near the impact site had been annihilated. Even the Fungal Carpet had been obliterated—total devastation.

However, the Brood Nest had been located in the earliest Swarm base, far from the impact site. Though its situation was precarious, it had been deeply buried underground and remained unaffected.

Luo Wen attempted to connect with the Brood Nest and found no abnormalities. Everything worked as usual. He could still access the genetic library and use the gene manipulation functions.

To his surprise, he discovered another hidden feature.

Previously, he had noticed the Swarm Network’s cloud storage capabilities. He could upload his genetic library, allowing the Brood Nest to receive it remotely without requiring physical contact.

The genetic library contained not only the genes he had collected but also his entire genetic blueprint, including the enigmatic Iphieash primal genes.

When Luo Wen instructed the Brood Nest to produce a body based on his genetic template, the process proceeded smoothly. The surrounding Fungal Carpet began supplying nutrients.

Due to the complexity of Luo Wen’s genes, it took a long time before the Brood Nest finally extruded an egg measuring 30 centimeters in diameter. Such a large egg pushed the Brood Nest to its production limits, leaving it noticeably depleted.

However, with the powerful support of the Fungal Carpet, it should recover quickly.

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