Gera’s plan never had the chance to be put into motion.
Because the Sub-King Zerg had truly gone ballistic.
After being suppressed and beaten for an entire small cycle, losing nearly half of his star sectors along the way, Krisha fell into a violent rage. The forces Sakdi now faced were no longer ordinary planetary garrisons, but the Sub-King’s true direct-line units.
The enemy’s Armed Species were out in full force, their prowess incomparable to the troops stationed on the habitat planets.
Even before the engagement began, Sakdi felt the weight of this "hard bone" he had to chew. Unlike the previous skirmishes that felt almost like child's play, heavy casualties were now inevitable.
Meanwhile, Sakdi’s own status seemed to be rising at the speed of a rocket. It was like a repeat of his life as a human; war had always been his fast track for promotion. It had propelled him from being an undocumented administrator of an energy planet to the right hand of the Grey-Wing leader.
A few offensive and defensive battles had also allowed Clark to gauge the full extent of Sakdi’s capabilities. Clark provided him with enough Zerg and fleets to supplement the Armed Species, giving Sakdi free rein to tear into the Sub-King.
His "boss," meanwhile, no longer had any lingering worries. It was unclear what Arthur had said to him, but the silver-grey female Zerg truly stopped mentioning the idea of keeping the human in the residential nest area.
Consequently, the other half of the Grey-Wings, led personally by Clark, fully demonstrated what it meant to have a "rabid dog" outbreak. They tore apart the Pedipalp and Broad-Wing species that had gathered to scavenge for advantages, even chasing them directly out of the Third Quadrant and shredding several small neighboring habitable star systems.
"Before the final death match with Krisha begins, I will crush every restless core-gene group in the vicinity."
In the communication feed, the high-ranking Zerg quickly wiped away blood and tossed the cloth to a subordinate.
His lead-grey eyes were indifferent and devoid of emotion, as if he were discussing something trivial. "Any creature that dares to set foot in my habitat or cross the line will not leave in one piece."
"Now I can probably understand where that ridiculous title of yours came from."
Even Sakdi couldn't help but click his tongue at the speed with which the other man was taking heads. What a ferocious race that sustained war through war. This was clearly an internal schism, yet the high-ranking Zerg was using the opportunity to expand his territory, swallowing up habitats that had never belonged to the Grey-Wings before.
Everything consumed was plundered directly from the defeated.
The victors prospered, while the losers were bled dry. The ten direct lineages stood tall, crushing everything beneath them and shifting all costs onto others.
"The good news is, your brother can’t sit still anymore."
Chatting didn't stop Sakdi from assigning tasks to all his subordinates. Krisha had mobilized two matrices of fleets at once, silently circling around to cut off their retreat.
"He’s sent me a little surprise gift pack."
"Your swarm members might suffer quite a few casualties this time."
"Before they are swarm members, their other identity is that of adversaries blocking the path ahead," Clark said coldly, his eyes instinctively flickering to the space behind him. The human youth was sitting not far away, maintaining long-distance communication with the stationed Gera. Arthur had taken the initiative to handle auxiliary work, helping the male Zerg crack the defense mechanisms of the Great Information Nest.
"I’ve said it before, your mindset is very unlike a Zerg—even a larva knows that the mercy you show an enemy will one day turn into blood flowing from your own body."
"I don't have much of a moral burden, I'm just reminding you first. After all, they were once your swarm members." Sakdi sighed. "And if you truly felt in your heart that this was some grand, wonderful thing, you wouldn't be stealing glances to see if your human heard you while you were saying it."
*Snap!*
The next second, his sham boss expressionlessly cut the communication.
*Tsk.*
Can't handle the heat, can he?
Standing up from the command seat, the Core Species tucked away his previous lazy smile and summoned the Armed Species leader who had been following him lately.
He had fought plenty of difficult battles; one more wouldn't hurt.
"Is the count finished?" he asked.
"The energy is sufficient, but the enemy outnumbers us," Kleiman replied. He was quite reliable when it came to official business. Having followed Clark for a long time, he was well-adjusted to this question-and-answer mode and laid out the entire battlefield projection before Sakdi. "The Sub-King wants to keep us all here."
"Does he not check the time before he starts dreaming?"
The black female Zerg chuckled, reaching out to flick the floating models. "How long until contact?"
"Ten micro-cycles."
That was less than fifteen minutes in human time.
The Zerg units of measurement were different from those of humans, which had been a massive headache during the early stages of constructing the River of Time; the most basic parts of the two systems were incompatible. Fortunately, after so much time, conversions in common fields had become proficient enough.
"It’s been a long time since I’ve watched fireworks."
Making a strangely sentimental remark, he reached out and patted the "tail-wagging bro" on the shoulder.
"Everyone, work hard to put on a cosmic firework show. Let's give Krisha a wake-up call."
*Your idea of fireworks is a bit abstract.*
When the first ship of the Sub-King’s fleet exploded, Kleiman suddenly understood what the Core Species meant.
Sakdi had positioned the Alpha command ship, which had the thickest defensive barriers, in the center as bait, while he himself boarded a strike ship.
The Sub-King’s firepower closed in from both sides like a meat grinder, tearing at the defensive formation with a relentless determination. They aimed to expose the "core" guarded in the very center as quickly as possible, then drag out the enemy high-commander and crush him.
But the Core Species was already gone.
The maneuverability of an Alpha ship was far inferior to that of strike ships and assault ships. To command a battle from such a vessel, one either had to be prepared to be a target or spend massive resources pulling in the wing ships to defend oneself.
It wasn't cost-effective.
He simply used his flagship as a fixed fortress, leaving it there to lure the enemy while performing indiscriminate sweeping attacks. Meanwhile, he took the light-armored Armed Species and switched to small escort ships, thrusting like a blade straight into the heart of the Sub-King’s matrix.
In terms of sheer volume, the armed force he brought out this time was smaller than the opponent's; he would lose in a war of attrition.
All elites had to be twisted into the sharpest blade, abandoning all non-essential parts to gouge out the enemy's heart at maximum speed.
His recent spree of "map-clearing" with the Armed Species hadn't been aimless. A commander who took over mid-way had to get a feel for his subordinates' capabilities and cultivate cooperative habits. Sakdi had spent too little time working with the Grey-Wings, so he could only compensate for this shortcoming by "grinding dungeons" like a madman.
Kleiman was now almost able to keep up with his reaction speed. The Armed Species were inherently powerful; all they had lacked before was a bit of rapport. When the lead strike ship began to accelerate forward, the direct-line female Zerg needed no further words to command his subordinates to follow.
In the past, the Zerg were accustomed to clearing enemy ships batch by batch, chewing through one before moving to the next, aiming to leave nothing behind. This was related to their locust-like habits.
But Sakdi didn't care about that.
What he wanted was speed. He wanted to rip through the enemy's entire web in the shortest possible time.
Pushing through planets before had been like a joke, far too minor. This kind of formal confrontation, winning against the odds, was his true domain.
While the Sub-King’s fleet was still focused on the distant main force and the Alpha ship guarded in the center, this pack of "rabid dog" strike ships blew up everything they touched. They carved a path of violence, forcibly inserting themselves from the left wing to tear straight into the enemy core.
Cosmic fireworks burst across the sky.
The man who had personally decapitated King Zerg five times led the team, braving the hail of bullets like an eel darting into a crate of sardines, throwing the entire enemy camp into a commotion.
After sinking two escort ships in a row, the commander of the Sub-King’s camp, nearly cornered by this unexpected interloper, panicked. He began to recklessly redeploy the fleet to protect the central command tower.
As it turned out, the Core Species had no intention of taking it down in one go. No matter how confident he was, he knew a light strike ship couldn't breach an Alpha-class command ship.
The innermost core was protected by thick defensive shields, so tough they required a main cannon to blast open.
He immediately pulled a U-turn and darted toward the right wing. Kleiman followed him, biting and finishing off enemies all the way. They blew things up and fled without staying a moment longer; every single one of them had seen red.
Once in a true state of war, Sakdi would no longer consider casualty rates.
Any concession was a hidden danger sown for failure. At this moment, death was merely a cold, rounded-off number, no longer related to living beings.
He was only responsible for using the smallest numbers to seize the largest stakes.
The enemy who had come up empty—or rather, the enemy Zerg—were baffled by this sudden turn and unconventional maneuver. They could only once again disperse the gathered escorts to support the other sections under attack, all while having to withstand the concentrated fire from the main force opposite them.
However, changing a matrix formation always took time. This extremely short time lag was enough for the Core Species, piloting the fastest strike ship, to lead his Zerg in tearing a gap through the hollowed-out right wing.
One hour into the opening, he had punched through the enemy's entire fleet from left to right with blitzkrieg speed.
On the battlefield of rapid assault, he had never known defeat.
"Keep the enemy's firepower pinned down for me." As the converging lasers and shells tried violently to shoot down the strike team, Sakdi issued orders to the Alpha ship he had left as bait. "Don't give them time to return for reinforcements. The moment they try to turn around to catch me, hammer them without regard for the cost."
"It would be best if you could blast open the defensive barriers of the enemy command ship."
They served as each other's bait, working in coordination, leading the Sub-King’s troops on a chase from both sides.
It was also fortunate that Clark’s subordinates were truly ferocious. Those willing to drop everything and follow the silver-grey female Zerg in rebelling against the current Sub-King were all extreme power-worshippers with rebellion in their bones. They were terrifying as enemies, but as subordinates, they were incredibly effective.
Not a single member of the Armed Species team Sakdi had pulled out fell behind; they struck wherever he pointed.
The Core Species would retreat immediately after a successful hit, having torn a gap in the enemy's right wing. By the time the fuming reinforcement troops arrived, this wicked, fire-starting entity had already fled as far as possible.
Yet, before the Sub-King’s troops could breathe a sigh of relief and refocus their fire on the center, the strike team that had disappeared for less than a minute pulled an immediate about-face, charging back and scattering the barely regrouped right wing once again.
"Is the energy accumulation complete?" the black female Zerg asked his Alpha ship, which was having a grand time playing "whack-a-mole." The main turret's charging time was a bit long, a common ailment of all high-lethality weapons.
The human star-swallowing weapon, *Amanonuhoko*, had an initial startup time of twelve hours, and a single shot would nearly drain the energy reserves of an entire planet.
"Twenty micro-cycles left," the subordinate responded quickly. "But one attack is only enough to tear open the enemy's shield. To sink the entire command ship, we’ll need a second shot."
"I'll go tear the shield. Can you manage a hit in one shot?"
Blowing up an escort ship at a distance that was almost a brush-by, the resulting shockwave nearly knocked the lighter strike ship off its high-speed trajectory. Sakdi was quick to manually wrench the ship back on course, sending a parting shot back at the enemy for good measure.
"I can," the subordinate answered without hesitation.
"Concentrate fire on the center. Don't give them a chance to counterattack."
"And don't give them a chance to hit the main cannon."
Seeing the depleted fleet huddling toward the center, Sakdi gave Kleiman an order: "Take your Zerg and cover me."
"How?" On the battlefield, the Armed Species didn't waste words. An order received one second was executed the next. "You say it, I'll cooperate."
"I'm going to hijack one of the enemy's escort ships."
The Core Species' operations were too fast to track. While he distributed different assignments, black scales began to climb up the side of his neck, and his golden pupils elongated vertically.
"You can guard against a thousand things, but you can't guard against an inside thief, right?"
"Since the shield can't be torn from the outside and it rejects all unidentified ships, it's better to just steal one of theirs," Sakdi said with a laugh.
That laughter made the scales on Kleiman’s tail stand on end.
"I'm going to use their own cannons to blow up their own defensive wall."
---
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
--- | --- | ---
亚王虫 | Sub-King Zerg | A high-ranking Zerg rank below the King.
武装种 | Armed Species | Combat-specialized Zerg.
微循环 | Micro-cycle | A Zerg unit of time.
天之琼 | Amanonuhoko | A "star-swallowing" superweapon; the name refers to the "Heavenly Jeweled Spear" from Japanese mythology.
阿尔法指挥舰 | Alpha Command Ship | A heavy, high-tier command vessel.
核心种 | Core Species | The rare, high-level Zerg type that Sakdi has become.
雄虫 | Male Zerg | In this setting, often more delicate or specialized in non-combat roles like tech/information.
雌虫 | Female Zerg | The primary warrior and leader class of the Zerg.
灰翅 | Grey-Wings | Clark's specific Zerg ethnic group/tribe.
