Chapter 396: The Swarm Gathers! Baiting the Ultimates! Raptorlings and Tunnelers!
"Rally—!"
Under the psionic command of the Queen of Blades, the Zerg fleet continued to churn out combat units while advancing through the Megacorp's relentless bombardment.
To protect the remaining Swarm Hosts, hordes of Mutalisks swarmed toward them, layer upon layer, forming a living shield.
With the aid of these protective Mutalisks, the Swarm Hosts were able to reach the enemy's defensive lines and dismantle the Megacorp's turret systems.
Whenever other turrets unleashed their hardlight cannon blasts, the Mutalisks would instinctively form into phalanxes, diving forward like moths to a flame, intercepting the deadly energy barrages.
This sacrificial tactic minimized damage to the Swarm Hosts. Even if each blast claimed tens of thousands of Mutalisks, the swarm accepted the cost without hesitation.
At the same time, the Queen of Blades' flagship, the massive Leviathan, was also cocooned in layers of Mutalisks.
Inside and out, the Leviathan was sealed tight. Every time an enemy strike inflicted damage, new waves of Mutalisks would rush in to reinforce the barrier.
This was the Zerg fleet's defensive doctrine.
Unlike the psionic shields of the Protoss or the armored energy barriers of humanity, the Zerg relied on a brutally simple strategy—using an Infinity tide of expendable bodies as living meat shields.
It was a method that seemed savage, utterly devoid of compassion—but for the hyper-efficient Zerg, it was by far the cheapest and most effective means of defense.
Whereas humans manipulate energy with tools, the Zerg evolved to internalize energy use, channeling it through genetic adaptation. While humans built machines, the Zerg simply rewrote their DNA.
By producing reinforcements as quickly as they consumed them, the Zerg fleet steamrolled through the first line of defense.
With the Swarm Hosts shielded by Mutalisks, they deployed countless bio-pods down onto the orbital defense platforms, gradually seizing ground from the Megacorp's AI-controlled turrets and sabotaging their weapon systems.
After several hours of fierce back-and-forth, the Zerg finally pushed into the final three orbital sectors of the star system.
Although the Queen of Blades had advanced with overwhelming momentum, the cost had been steep—more than half of the Swarm's forces had already been lost.
Even if reinforcements could keep coming, the Zerg hadn't absorbed any biomass along the way.
They were simply redirecting waves of reinforcements from the rear lines.
It turned out the Megacorp had anticipated this—by adopting a scorched-earth strategy, they had wiped all life from the planets in the front-line orbitals.
Not even a single microbe was left. No animals, no plants—not even a lone cell. The Zerg would find nothing to devour here.
As she silently tallied up their losses and recalculated the invasion's timeline, the Queen of Blades' expression grew grim. The prolonged breakthrough had already cost her too much time.
If this went on any longer, they might not make it in time.
"Accelerate the assault. Prioritize aerial pod deployment."
At her command, massive numbers of drop-pods were launched by the Swarm Hosts directly toward the planetary surface. These weren't waiting for defenses to be neutralized—they were being forcibly hurled down while under fire from hardlight turrets.
Masses of Mutalisks flooded the inner orbital zones of each planet, shielding the descending pods as best they could.
But the orbital defenses were ferocious. More than half of the drop-pods were vaporized mid-air, reduced to ash by concentrated fire before they could even hit the ground.
Even the Swarm Hosts, protected by Mutalisks, suffered devastating losses in the descent.
This was the cost of ignoring hardlight cannon emplacements—either chew through the defenses bit by bit, or brute-force a landing through sheer attrition.
The Queen of Blades' reckless tactic resulted in massive casualties, but it did manage to get some Zerg units boots-on-ground at the Megacorp's frontline bases.
However, what greeted them was a bitter disappointment: even here, they couldn't harvest any meaningful biomass.
That was because nearly all combat units in the region had already been replaced by the Megacorp's AI-controlled machines.
Everything—from the airborne fighters to the ground-based units—was remotely piloted by powerful artificial intelligence.
Just then, a massive Zerg drop-pod, trailing a fiery wake, slammed into the ocean.
The impact sent towering waves surging outward in all directions.
[Zerg forces are making landfall—!]
Upon detecting enemy contact, the AI scout drones immediately flagged the incursion.
More pods followed in rapid succession, splashing into the sea, slamming into beaches, and crashing into jungle terrain.
Then, the ground erupted.
Swarms of Mutalisks burst forth, blotting out the sky as they surged toward every Megacorp facility in sight, like a biblical plague of locusts.
The tails of the Mutalisks sported massive stinger-like organs—once meant for reproduction, now weaponized into launchers for a deadly parasitic creature called the Raptorling.
These razor-edged worms, upon launch, curled into a compact spiral and spun at high speed, boring through armor plating.
Once inside their target, they detonated violently, maximizing internal damage.
One unfortunate AI Falcon-class shuttle was targeted by a swarm of Mutalisks and riddled by dozens of spinning Raptorlings.
In seconds, the shuttle was torn apart, its fuselage disintegrating into a rain of smoldering components.
The remaining AI shuttles returned fire with autocannons and anti-air missiles. Their heavy-caliber rounds tore through several Mutalisks midair.
But the Zerg reproduced too quickly. Within moments, waves of fresh attackers took the place of the fallen.
Left with no better option, the shuttle group retreated toward the military base, hoping to leverage its full-spectrum anti-air systems against the relentless swarm.
By this point, the base's defenses were fully active—flak turrets and ground-to-air missiles wove a deadly web of overlapping fire.
Mutalisks were torn from the sky en masse, falling in tatters. Even the Raptorling parasites they fired were blocked by a powerful energy field.
Fortunately, the Megacorp had outfitted the base with planetary-grade power cores, providing uninterrupted shielding to the entire central command zone.
As the AI shuttles zipped through the defensive field at full throttle, the Mutalisks behind them smashed headlong into the invisible barrier.
It was like a bird crashing into a skyscraper window—necks snapped, bodies crumpled, and they plummeted instantly.
This was the Megacorp's modified planetary shield grid: not only could their own weapons fire outward unimpeded, their units could pass freely through—but enemy forces were stopped cold.
Battered and frustrated, the swarm of Mutalisks could do nothing more than die by the dozens, torn apart by the defensive batteries as they flailed helplessly outside the impenetrable shield.
At this moment, shattered wings and broken limbs of Mutalisks rained down like a storm, quickly piling into a grotesque sea of corpses around the front-line military base.
Yet the Zerg's offensive tactics remained remarkably patient and methodical.
Under relentless waves of suicidal Mutalisk assaults, a vast number of drop-pods had successfully landed around the base perimeter. The creatures hatched from them surged forth in a churning tide.
The Megacorp's ground forces immediately unleashed their full firepower—massive-caliber artillery roared non-stop, raining explosive death upon the Zerg horde.
Each blast created shockwaves that tore through Zerg ranks, scattering body parts across the sky and over scorched terrain.
Still, despite the fierce bombardment, the Zerg churned out even more aberrant creatures to replace the fallen. The fastest among them—the Zerglings—had already reached the edge of the shield barrier.
These frenzied creatures hurled themselves against the energy field, gnashing and clawing in a mad effort to tear it down.
Perched atop the fortress walls, AI-controlled turrets opened fire from high positions. Heavy pulse cannons and Gauss railguns unleashed hell, tearing into the agile and savage Zerglings below.
Pulses and metal shards filled the air, blooming into gory blossoms as wave after wave of Zerglings were reduced to piles of gore.
Meanwhile, the rest of the AI hardlight turrets continued their unrelenting barrage, reloading with energy crystals and vespene gas imported from other planets.
Holding back the ever-pressing Zerg fleet.
Fortunately, the StarCraft universe was rich in energy crystals and vespene gas—otherwise, there would've been no way to keep the turrets and planetary engines running at such unsustainable output.
And while the Megacorp's defense grid had proven formidable, the Zerg fleet's offense—under the Queen of Blades—was equally relentless and effective.
Despite heavy losses, the Zerg forces advanced steadily.
From the current outlook, it was clear that fully wiping out the Queen of Blades' swarm would be impossible without the Keystone reaching full charge.
Watching the situation escalate across all defense sectors, Paul grew increasingly uneasy. He turned to Chisaji Fox and asked:
"Is there any way to speed up the Keystone's charging? Like hooking up more planetary engines to it—would that help at all?"
The Queen of Blades' strategy was clearly working. Though the Zerg had taken heavy casualties, their reinforcements never stopped coming.
In contrast, the Megacorp's defense grid was already half-crippled, with Zerg forces even swarming the base perimeter.
At this rate, they wouldn't hold out long enough for the Keystone to finish charging.
Chisaji Fox sighed and shook her head. "The Keystone's charging mechanism isn't about simply pouring energy into it. The power we're feeding it is just a catalyst—what actually charges it is the Keystone's own massive, internal energy matrix."
"We've already done the calculations. One planetary engine is about the upper limit. Adding more could cause the Keystone shards to overload and explode."
She spoke plainly—if there had been any way to charge it faster, they would've done it already.
This was already the best possible solution.
Paul fell silent. He turned toward the holographic display and quietly calculated how much longer their defenses could hold out.
Meanwhile, the ravenous swarm continued pounding the fortress energy shields. The pile of Zerg corpses stacked outside the barrier was nearly 100 meters high.
If not for the occasional clean-up blast from high-temperature laser cannons burning away the bodies, many of the defense strongholds would've already been overrun and buried in biomass.
Realizing that the Megacorp's front-line headquarters wasn't falling easily…
The Queen of Blades issued a new command—sending wave after wave of Zerglings to crawl onto the shield barriers themselves, spreading out and increasing contact area to weaken the field faster.
In an instant, hundreds of bases were transformed into nightmarish mounds, crawling with Zerg. Mutalisks and Zerglings alike attempted to penetrate the shield from every angle.
Even those without trypophobia would feel their skin crawl at the sight. As long as the energy barrier held, all was well—but if it failed for even a second, the defenders inside would be slaughtered in an instant.
To prolong shield integrity, AI turrets began prioritizing Banelings as their top targets.
Unlike the Zerglings with their crude claws and fangs, the Banelings' explosive payloads posed a far greater threat to the energy shields.
Especially since their detonations released highly corrosive acid, far more destructive than mere physical attacks.
Thus, the turrets deliberately ignored the Zerglings crawling on the barrier, focusing all firepower on intercepting Banelings before they got close.
High-precision AI laser arrays scanned the swarm for Baneling signatures and sniped them the moment they were detected.
Even so, a few Banelings managed to slip through, using other Zerg as cover, and reached the shields—detonating themselves in a rain of toxic acid.
The corrosive fluid sizzled against the shield surface, slowly eroding sections of the field across several bases.
At this point, the Keystone was only 13% charged—but some of the fortress shield fields had already worn down by as much as 39%.
Watching the Zerg's steady, deliberate assault patterns, Li Ang —stationed at the Megacorp's Multiverse Command Base—could already guess the Queen of Blades' strategy.
She was baiting them.
As long as the Megacorp didn't lose their cool and use any ultimate weapons too early, she would keep sending waves of expendable units. But the moment the Megacorp triggered one of their "big moves," her true forces—Ultralisks, Swarm Hosts, and the Leviathan itself—would be unleashed.
Classic bait-and-punish tactics to exhaust key enemy cooldowns before the real battle began.
And Li Ang wasn't fooled for a second.
Per his orders, the Megacorp's current strategy was simple: don't overreact. Respond cautiously. Delay as long as possible.
Only once the Zerg's true main force revealed itself would they counterattack with their full might.
But just as the outside Zerg swarm continued hammering away at the shield barriers, the ground suddenly began to quake.
As if some colossal beast were slithering beneath the earth.
[Tunneler movement detected—!]
The alert sounded the instant a massive, sandworm-like creature burst up from underground.
Its gaping maw spewed out a swarm of creep and Zerg units—
The Swarm had tunneled beneath the energy shield and infiltrated the Megacorp's front-line base from within!
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