I Am The Swarm

Clirey had little desire to delve into the cavern. This nest was profoundly eerie and completely different from those they had encountered before. For other nests, their current relentless excavation efforts would have emptied them long ago.

Yet this nest’s sheer expanse and the labyrinthine complexity of its underground tunnels far exceeded all expectations.

Dr. Balt, a biologist, speculated that this nest belonged to an unprecedentedly large swarm family, potentially housing an unimaginable number of organisms. This made any deep infiltration of the nest exceedingly dangerous.

One needed to remember the nest near Cross Base, which, even after suffering a pitfall trap that killed hundreds of thousands of its swarm, losing its food stores, had still managed to deploy 200,000 troops to overrun the base.

And this nest was even larger. That suggested the presence of millions, perhaps more, of the creatures inside. If they went berserk, even with advanced weaponry and seasoned troops, the invading forces would struggle to fend them off.

Thankfully, this operation involved substantial manpower. With coordination from General Masai and Major General Porter, the first wave entering the underground nest exceeded 100,000 troops.

The vast army divided into over a thousand teams, each entering the nest through different passageways, converging toward the location emitting the signal.

The paths within the cave were convoluted. The wider main corridors allowed three or four people to march side by side, while the narrowest passages barely permitted even the slimmest Riken soldiers to crawl through after removing all their gear.

Faced with such passages, the Riken dared not proceed recklessly. To pass through, they would have to use tools to widen the tunnels. However, this approach was highly inefficient and risked causing cave-ins.

Each time they encountered a fork in the path, their teams split further. Although they had entered with a large force, after several rounds of branching, most teams were reduced to just over a hundred members.

The Swarm seemed indifferent to their intrusion. For an entire hour, not a single bug appeared. However, as they approached within 500 meters of the signal, the attacks began.

These creatures clung to the cave walls in darkness, their concealment flawless. They emitted no heat signatures, making them nearly undetectable by conventional sensors.

The Riken’s current early-warning systems relied on vibration detection devices, capable of identifying enemies based on the sound of their movements.

But if the bugs remained still, the devices were rendered useless.

The Riken’s fleet research teams were urgently developing detection tools specifically for the Swarm, but the civilization had only encountered the Swarm a month ago. Such a short timeframe was insufficient to yield meaningful results.

A few Riken soldiers, who had relaxed slightly due to the lack of prior attacks, were the first to fall victim. Their delayed reactions to the ambush cost them their lives.

Raiders, often deployed for frontal assaults, were actually high-agility, high-burst units with limited defenses, making them ideal for ambush and assassination tasks.

Their pseudo-AI-like intelligence allowed them to remain perfectly still in a state of perpetual ambush, unaffected by hunger or distress unless ordered otherwise.

The sound of chitinous blades piercing vital organs, dying gasps, panicked cries for help, and shocked screams merged into a cacophony of chaos.

The Swarm’s efficient coordinated attacks—a mystery yet unsolved by the Riken—unleashed a synchronized assault on all Riken squads. In just one minute of combat, the Riken forces suffered severe losses.

Two out of every ten troops were killed, with some squads entirely wiped out.

However, the slaughter ended there. The surviving Riken soldiers quickly organized defenses. Their extensive combat experience against the Swarm enabled them to mount a sharp counterattack.

The Swarm’s rudimentary combat tactics and strategies often succeeded only once against the technologically advanced, systematically trained Riken army.

Ambushes like these wouldn’t yield the same results again.

In the narrow corridors, the Swarm’s physical bodies stood no chance against flamethrowers—lethal weapons in such confined spaces. Moreover, as an assassin-type unit, the Raiders could only manage one strike before being overwhelmed.

The Swarm’s offensive was swiftly repelled, leaving only charred corpses in the aftermath.

Although the Riken had suffered heavy casualties, the commanders felt a strange sense of satisfaction. Having conquered eleven nests, they knew exactly what this situation signified.

They were close to the elusive “food store.”

The Swarm soon organized another wave of attacks, but against the now-prepared Riken forces, the results were dismal. The casualty ratios swung dramatically in the Riken’s favor.

Gradually, the seemingly endless tide of Swarm forces diminished. From an overwhelming flood, it became a trickle before finally ceasing altogether. The reinforcements had been entirely depleted.

Over a million bugs had perished in the suicidal assault—by far the largest nest the Riken had encountered.

If the battle had taken place in open terrain, without the confined tunnels allowing complete firepower coverage, and if the Swarm had been smarter in preserving their forces, the outcome could have been drastically different. It might have been the Riken army that faced annihilation.

But there were no “ifs.” The defeated paid with their lives, while the victors claimed everything.

What the Riken claimed was a massive “food store” composed of over ten chambers.

As usual, once the Swarm’s final suicidal wave was obliterated, the “food store” was empty of bugs. Only prey wrapped in white silk remained.

Still, the Riken cautiously gathered a large number of troops outside the food store before carefully entering, inspecting the surrounding walls and ceilings.

Thankfully, the Swarm had adhered to their patterns, and nothing unexpected occurred.

Due to the immense size of the food store and the exhaustion of the Riken troops after the battle, the search proceeded at an exceptionally slow pace.

It wasn’t until five hours later that a soldier, tearing open a silk cocoon, stumbled upon something that made his eyes light up as if he had seen a promotion and a raise materialize before him.

Inside was a young female Riken, strikingly beautiful. Her pale blue skin was even paler due to weakness. Her eyes were tightly shut, and she appeared lifeless, yet the faint movements of her nostrils and chest revealed she was still alive.

Indeed, the Swarm’s food stores never contained dead prey—a fact gleaned from the Riken’s experience with eleven other nests.

The soldier had never met Lieutenant Colonel Cross, but he had seen her photograph. While the woman before him looked slightly different from the picture, everyone understood how photos worked.

Furthermore, given the mental and physical torment she must have endured, some changes in appearance were entirely reasonable.

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