I Am The Swarm-Chapter 824: Turning Point

The cost of maintaining a single warship was negligible, but across the entire defense line—trillions of ships—the expense for just one round of maintenance had become astronomical. For the Ji race in their current state, it was an unbearable burden.

Since the first warship required servicing, the Ji’s Starport ships had not had a moment of rest. Countless warships queued up, awaiting maintenance. Although the Ji had a considerable number of Starport ships and had even constructed several supermassive Starports to service their frontline fleets, the task of maintaining trillions of warships—even with sufficient consumables—would take an immense amount of time.

As a result, the first round of maintenance had not even finished when warships began requiring their second round.

And as time passed—third, fourth, fifth…

By New Era Year 780, the siege had lasted nearly three centuries. The Ji’s stockpiles of high-wear consumables had essentially been exhausted.

Cut off from mineral supply, they had no choice but to dismantle some of their own warships to manufacture replacement components. After all, some ships had been out of the battle sequence since the first maintenance rotation and had still not made it to the front of the line. Given the foreseeable future, they likely never would—better to put them to use now.

Thus, self-dismantling became the Ji’s second-largest source of warship losses.

On the battlefield, the ferocious combat continued. But unlike the early stages—when the battlefield was clear, occupied only by forces and crisscrossing energy beams—it was now shrouded in a murky gray haze.

Zooming in revealed that it was a black-gray fibrous substance, spread across the entire battlefield. In some areas, it had accumulated to such a degree that it formed dense layers, making the region viscous. Not only did it obstruct the Ji’s cannon fire, but it also blocked the Swarm’s advance.

Through nearly three hundred years of unceasing assault, the Swarm’s charges had never relented, and the intensity of war had never dipped. At every moment, countless Swarm units fell on the path of attack.

Their corpses accumulated into flesh mountains, but before these could fully form, they were often obliterated by the Gene Destruction Cannons mounted on the Ji Battle Stars.

The blood and flesh disintegrated into ash—but not entirely. A small portion always remained. These residuals were now the black-gray fibrous debris covering the battlefield.

Over centuries, they had amassed into a scale that could no longer be ignored.

Though they had long since lost their chain-reaction disintegration properties, the Swarm could no longer recycle them. These were true waste, with virtually no value for reuse.

And the same held true for the Ji. Some of the black fiber had even drifted into their formation. If there were even the slightest hint of usability, the Ji would have recycled them—because at this point, every bit of space mattered to their survival.

However, this massive debris obstructed not only the Swarm’s charges, but also posed major problems for the Ji.

It increased the wear and tear on energy projectiles mid-flight, but more critically—it could block the chain-propagation of the Gene Destruction Cannon.

This greatly reduced the weapon’s deterrent effect on the Swarm. As a result, the Swarm increased the density of its assault formations, placing even greater pressure on the Ji.

On balance, the creation and accumulation of this black fibrous debris was actually a net gain for the Swarm. Though it imposed some drawbacks on them, it impacted the Ji far more—and more severely.

The heavier defensive pressure shortened the Ji warships’ maintenance cycles. More and more ships failed to even reach the front of the maintenance queue before their next cycle arrived.

A vast number of ships were left accumulating behind the front line due to lack of repairs. This reduced the number of warships holding the line, which shortened rest times, which in turn accelerated component degradation.

In this chain reaction, maintenance cycles became shorter and shorter. By the eighth round of maintenance, the cycle had dropped from fifty years per round to just thirty—nearly cut in half. And that time was still shrinking. Within a few more rotations, the Ji could very well face a crisis of no usable ships left at all.

In truth, they might not even need to wait that long.

Though the fibrous black debris acted like a viscous ocean, having lost its Gene Destruction properties, it could now be touched by Swarm units.

And with such a massive field of cover, the Swarm would naturally exploit it. Though it was not easy to push, Primordial bodies could manage it by maximizing their surface area contact with the fibrous mass.

Fortunately for them, as soft-bodied organisms, the Primordial Bodies were well suited for expanding their surface area. Moreover, their limitless numbers allowed them to interlock, forming an impenetrable meat wall.

This wall of flesh pushed against the fibrous sea, while more Primordial Bodies behind it continued pushing the wall. Blue arcs of electricity burst from their bodies—a sign they were operating at maximum power.

As more and more Primordial Bodies joined the effort, the wall of flesh and the black fibrous ocean finally began to move—and their speed steadily increased.

Faced with this black-gray tide bearing down on them, the Ji felt only despair. The Battle Stars’ Gene Destruction Cannons could not penetrate the fibrous sea to hit the Primordial Bodies behind, and the standard warships’ main cannons had even less chance of piercing this invincible shield.

The sea of black fibers continued forward, growing faster with each passing moment. Though the increase was small, at this rate, it would take half a year for it to reach the Ji defensive line.

But what was half a year to the Swarm, who had already waited centuries? As long as they could push this black sea to the Ji defenses, the outcome would be inevitable.

After all, both sides had already played out this scenario once. Although the Ji now had stronger defenses—more warships and Battle Stars, shorter lines, denser formations—the result was unlikely to change.

Time sped by. A month passed in the blink of an eye. The black fibrous sea reached the edge of the Ji defense line, just as the calculations had predicted.

The one commanding the Ji—Lumina—was originally an artificial intelligence, highly proficient in computation. The Ji had long foreseen this and knew it could not be stopped. So they altered their formation in advance, opening a corridor for the black sea to enter, in hopes of using that moment to annihilate the Swarm forces following behind.