In the freshwater basins of the Old Earth, there lived a species of fish known as *Pygocentrus nattereri*, more commonly and affectionately called the red-bellied piranha.
These relatively small fish were omnivorous scavengers with a penchant for flesh. They would swarm and tear at any agile prey, churning the surrounding waters into a bloody froth. When the insectoid starships and small assault crafts clustered together, their behavioral patterns bore a striking resemblance to these unwelcome fish.
Humanity pursued a minimalist aesthetic of steel, striving for the smoothest lines in their vehicles and weaponry. The biological technology of the Swarm ran in the opposite direction. It was hard to say which side was more intimidating.
Even someone as attentive to human psychological health as Clark could not change the fact that the ships hanging around the docking rails essentially looked like a swarm of moths or a cluster of poised lampreys.
Only now, the situation was reversed: Sakdi and his companions had become the prey being chased by the red-bellied piranhas.
The iterative function of "tearing and suction" had originally been designed to target human warships and mechs. Small wing-ships could easily latch onto larger frigates or battleships. Once the target was slowed, the enemy would act like lampreys, ripping away large sections of outer plating, flesh and metal alike. The soaring tide of insects—or rather, the swarms of wing-ships—transformed into schools of fish swimming freely through the cosmos. From the operators to their weapons, every movement perfectly illustrated the concept of "encroachment."
Once, someone had loudly questioned why humanity struggled so much against the Swarm despite possessing starships and star-swallowing weapons. They wrote articles accusing high-level administrators of prolonging the war to embezzle funds and satisfy personal greed.
In response, Sakdi took the fellow—who clearly had too much time and food on his hands—and dropped him directly onto the front lines. He thoughtfully processed a new set of enlistment papers for the man, complete with an honorary title, so the eloquent youth would have "the opportunity to access first-hand frontline data and express his observations to his heart's content."
"Whoever makes the claim bears the burden of proof," Sakdi had said.
Facing Marshal Ye Ci, who had come to demand a self-reflection report, the man—who now looked mature but remained as recalcitrant as ever—felt no internal guilt. His primary specialty was doing things that weren't exactly "humane."
"The flowers in the ivory tower lie on soft, dustless cushions. While they sentimentally preen their white feathers in self-pity, they think war is just a snap of the fingers—a turn-based game where two species go back and forth like children playing house, bowing to thank their opponents after the match."
"Would you like to see which path I'm taking?" the man holding the script for a restoration plot asked sincerely.
Pure idealists and saints would choose to overthrow a corrupt Federation to build a new, better one.
Sakdi would not.
He couldn't be a saint, and he had never been a good man. He chose to take everything and leave.
His personal ambition was like boiling water overflowing a container, scalding anyone who dared to draw near. Rather than labeling him an idealist, it was more accurate to call him an "actionist"—one who strictly defined his desires and realized them step by step.
The conservative nobles cursed this nobody "bastard" as a base thief who "corrupted the polity, regressed civilization, and held all of humanity hostage."
The man, whose head was ringing from combat and who was currently pondering how to have his inspection teams seize a few more smuggling ships to subsidize the budget, laughed out loud when he heard those remarks.
"Is it because they don't *want* to be Emperor?"
In the art of leaving everyone speechless, he was always miles ahead, as well as being both annoying and merciless: "It's because they *can't* do it."
After that, the writer sent to the front lines wailed in despair, struggling on the brink of life and death for nearly a year. For the first three months, the man sent countless wireless messages begging for mercy or a transfer, all of which were rejected.
This resulted in the "tower flower" being forced to evolve rapidly to survive. In a short time, he went from a melancholy, frail little cuckoo who refused to touch a speck of filth into a "corpse flower" that could run while carrying kilograms of artillery shells and crawl through mud and excrement without blinking an eye.
The "flower" whose life goals for twenty-odd years had been drinking, making friends, and complaining had finally become a qualified tough guy.
He also came to deeply understand the tragic fact: *It wasn't that humanity didn't want to end it quickly; it was that it truly couldn't be ended quickly.*
To survive was, in many ways, a manifestation of sheer luck.
The first-generation star-swallowing weapon, Heaven's Jade, required twelve hours of charging time and nearly drained the energy of an entire planet. When humans calculated energy conversion efficiency, they remembered to count the total energy consumed, but they often forgot that an attack capable of dismantling an entire capital planet required an accumulation of energy far exceeding the final effect shown.
If this intangible thing were to be materialized, it had a unified name: Stellar Core Energy.
The Red Tai Sui's expedition required massive amounts of Stellar Core Energy, and the activation of star-swallowing weapons required it as well. Energy did not fall from the sky, nor did it float down a river to greet them.
Humans were digging for it frantically, and the insects were digging for it frantically, but humans were clearly less efficient.
The crimson weapon could tear open a Sub-King's nest countless times, but if the sequence of shield-breaking, attacking, and retreating failed to link perfectly even once—or if the defensive barrier was blasted open mid-battle—the swarming insects and their lamprey-like fleets would bury humanity's only trump card right there.
If starships were things that could be conjured at will, humanity would have conquered the universe long ago.
The current situation was a reprise of that realization.
The originally sparse wing-ships were being pecked to pieces. Above them were the medium-sized ships beginning a sector lockdown; below them was the rift gradually expanding to drag all living things into its depths. To lower their altitude for the rescue, the Grey-Wings had not carried heavy weapons that would cause further tearing.
The frenzied Pod-species bit down hard on their prey, unwilling to let their exhausted enemies escape.
Even if the Core Species' sniping ability was terrifyingly potent, he couldn't manifest more ammunition out of thin air. He shot down seven Pod-species craft, and seventeen more immediately clung to his side.
"Go... first!"
Affected by the Akashic interference, short-range communication was extremely blurred. The accompanying Grey-Wing wing-ships automatically switched to combat mode, no longer accepting protection.
"...Closing... won't make it, go!"
Once the medium ships' defensive barriers were fully raised, sealing the path between the middle and lower layers, they would be trapped on a surface that was destined to collapse.
The Grey-Wings following the Sub-King on this surface mission were almost all core followers, aside from the Armed Species. They quickly made the optimal judgment, preparing to act as consumables to tear open a blood-soaked path for their most important leader.
The nature of this race was strange and contradictory.
They obeyed the strong unconditionally, yet were always ready to topple them and take their place. They were filled with a spirit of slaughter and plunder, yet when faced with a threat to the species' survival, they would unite without hesitation, charging forward in waves, unafraid of death to protect the most important "Core"—just as they had once guarded the King Insects.
It was a truly loathsome scene.
When humanity first overturned an insect nest, the soldiers who set out with Sakdi were nearly wiped out. The Red Tai Sui, which charged into the King's Nest over the remains of its comrades, had melted two of its core power furnaces due to a forced warp jump.
The same situation was playing out again, but this time it was the insects of the Grey-Wing tribe trying to escort him and the Sub-King out at any cost.
It was a joke more hellish than a "hellish joke."
What was even more hellish was that war never shifted based on individual will. On Old Earth, when people pondered the Trolley Problem, the questioner at least gave an option of whether to manually change the tracks. Reality was not so merciful.
When Sakdi turned his head to look at Clark, his brother, who was focused on piloting the ship, was also looking at him.
Every surviving light ship bore wounds of some kind—scrapes or jagged metal torn away by the enemy.
Fate was forcing them to choose.
To stay or to go were the only two options. The former meant all the Grey-Wings around them would likely have zero chance of survival; the latter meant the whole nest would be wiped out together.
"I'm going to hijack one of their ships," Sakdi said, quickly flipping open his safety harness and standing up. "The Pod-species' small craft still have ammunition."
"It won't delay them for long."
They were too close to the Tide. The Core Species was covered in pollutants, which had rubbed off all over the cockpit, causing black veins to crawl across Clark's beautiful silver-grey wings.
Clark's expression was blank. "Their defensive barrier is about to close. We won't make it out in time."
"You can't save every insect. You understand this as well as I do," the Sub-King said, his grey eyes closing from exhaustion.
However, just as his voice fell, the enemy craft that had been tailing them suddenly slammed on its brakes.
Immediately, that annoying, gadfly-like light ship began to plummet like a bird with broken wings.
It was as abrupt as a glitching disconnect.
Following that, the entire swarm of dark aircraft seemed to lose power. Their thrusters ceased functioning, creating a sense of sudden, comical, and eerie stillness. They floated silently in the air for a moment, suspended and motionless, before crashing down from the sky just like the first ship.
It was a spectacle of timely salvation.
—In the most positive sense.
Simultaneously, the roar of massive explosions filled the world. The barrier above them, which had been halfway closed, stopped. The membrane, which had been reduced to a tiny sliver of a gap, began to show fine cracks, slowly dissolving and collapsing along those lines.
Sakdi and Clark stared at each other.
Beside them, the Grey-Wings who had been prepared to carve a bloody path were also stunned by this unexpected development.
In places they couldn't see, every warship and small wing-ship belonging to the enemy suddenly stopped receiving signals from the central command tower without any warning.
The Pod-species were dazed for a moment by this inexplicable turn of events, followed immediately by a descent into fury.
Before they could even begin troubleshooting the cause, every light screen within sight began to flash in synchronization.
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
Red warning codes layered over one another, as if blood were washing over every massive screen, every tiny data link port, and every holographic projection.
These steel monsters, which had grown flesh and blood, began to weep electronic tears.
All external armor plates slowly retracted due to conflicting commands. Rows of weapons froze in place, and even the defensive barriers were shrinking. The nearly-sealed barrier began to shatter because of this pause.
The stacked alarms continued to proliferate and multiply, nearly overflowing from the screens—cold, frenzied, and carrying a bone-chilling fervor.
The Great Beast became the mouth of the master, the hand of the master, the very will of the master, writing out dense commands in a language no one could understand.
It did not comprehend the emotions of humans or insects. Thus, it stripped away all disguises, tore off every decorative word, and revealed the truest form of desire.
It allowed this pure affection to bleed a grim, crimson trail.
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS DENIED
Ships that had lost their direction in the chaos collided, exploding over the Pod-species' core planet and across the dome of the Grey-Wings' habitat.
For a time, no female insect knew what was happening. The Grey-Wings locked in bitter combat and the Pod-species who had suddenly lost control were equally bewildered. But before the former could figure out the situation, they had already begun to turn and counter-attack, relying on years of combat experience.
The warships whose defensive barriers had dissolved suddenly became fragile and brittle. When they blew up, they were accompanied by leaping flames and massive shockwaves, letting out continuous wails and tremors like the shattering of stars.
"Go!"
Sakdi didn't understand what madness had gripped his opponents, but that didn't stop him from issuing commands to the accompanying wing-ships without hesitation.
The "net" that had bound them to the surface and severed them from the sky was gone. The surviving Grey-Wings broke through the blockade at maximum speed, leaving behind those lamprey ships that had been chasing them moments ago and were now spinning aimlessly in place.
The moment they broke through the gravitational pull of the Tide and burst into the lowest hovering layer, all the Pod-species' medium ships "turned" around.
They "watched" the small craft, which was swaying from the pull of the Tide like a white bird about to have its neck wrung, as it finally broke through all obstacles and soared into the land of freedom.
All the screens fell into darkness, and then, character by character, white text was keyed in.
The language of the Old Earth, the Common Tongue of humanity, the Common Tongue of the Swarm, the emotional script of the Swarm, the ancient Shanu-ma dialect, the classical communication code of the Core Gene groups, strange codes that no one could understand...
The same message melted onto every screen of every information receiving port.
"I found you."
[Control transfer complete. Access granted.]
***
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Sacre-D: Reborn as the Swarm's Apex | Chapter 128 | I Found You | Novela.app | Novela.app
