Although the Swarm didn’t have a long history, they were already quite experienced in dealing with minefields. Ever since their early battles with the Riken Civilization, their enemies had consistently deployed minefields to fend off the advancing insect tide.
With the weapon specifications provided by the Inner-circle Alliance, the Swarm now had a clear understanding of what they were up against. Countless Space Octopus larval bodies began swaying their way toward the minefields. Each one was under ten ters long, making them among the smaller of the larval class.
While Ji weapons were extrely sensitive, they had been calibrated for massive enemies stretching over a kiloter in length. Using them on these small creatures would be a waste of resources.
Exploiting this fact, the larval bodies continued to advance, releasing space-adapted Recon Bugs and Spider Combat Bugs along the way. As they spread out en masse, even the Ji race’s stealth-capable weapons were gradually discovered and exposed.
At this point, the Ji race faced a dilemma. While these weapons were trigger-based, they could also be manually detonated via remote. Realistically, though, they had little choice—if they didn’t trigger them, the Spider Combat Bugs would destroy the mines anyway.
Fortunately, the mines weren’t expensive. Thanks to the Ji race’s powerful industrial base, they could mass-produce them easily. Upon detecting the alliance’s invasion routes, the Ji had preemptively saturated a region spanning several light-years with these traps. Even now, they continued to expand the area.
With assistance from artificial intelligence, the Ji race’s timing control was impeccable. They consistently detonated the mines in the final seconds before they were compromised, significantly slowing the alliance’s mine-clearing efforts.
“What exactly is the Ji race trying to do?”
“They don’t seem to want to fight… they’re stalling for ti.”
“Whatever the Ji race is planning, we must stop it. If they want ti, then we’ll speed things up.”
“But we’ll need the Swarm’s cooperation…”
“The Swarm hates the Ji race. They won’t refuse—just like before.”
There were two primary ways to accelerate the clearance of the minefield. The first was blanket artillery fire to blast a path through. However, both the Swarm and the Inner-circle Alliance primarily used energy-based projectiles. While these had good penetration and produced localized explosions, they weren’t effective at covering broad areas in open space. This approach would waste ti and likely leave gaps.
The second option was to send units directly through the field. Obviously, this sort of suicidal task couldn’t be handed to the Alliance’s elite warships—so naturally, it fell to the Swarm units, who had been designated as cannon fodder.
Although the Swarm and the Inner-circle Alliance were allies, and their relationship had remained cordial so far, this kind of “go die for us” job wasn’t sothing easily requested.
Still, in a civilization with trillions upon trillions of citizens, finding a few who were shaless—or outright lacked sha—was not difficult. Thus, the Swarm soon received the Alliance’s “request.”
Luo Wen had already guessed what the Ji race—or more accurately, Lumina—was trying to do, but such intel couldn’t be shared openly with their allies. However, since these allies were enthusiastically doing sothing that might cause Lumina trouble, Luo Wen was more than happy to support it.
The Swarm’s unexpectedly agreeable response left the Inner-circle commanders overjoyed. They silently reminded themselves never to provoke that female Swarm Empress unless they were absolutely sure they could win.
In their eyes, they had clearly underestimated the Swarm’s hatred for the Ji race. And all this “irrational” behavior, they assud, originated from the Swarm Empress.
Soon after, the Swarm dispatched large numbers of Primordial bodies into the minefields, heedless of casualties. However, the Ji race could remotely adjust their weapons’ sensitivity, or even deactivated the auto-trigger function entirely. As a result, the Swarm’s new tactics had limited success.
The Swarm still had to manually locate the stealthed Ji weapons before they could trigger them. Even with Primordial bodies in the mix, the mine-clearing speed only improved slightly.
To increase speed further, the Swarm would have to raise the unit density per area—but such massive losses were unacceptable, not only to the Swarm but even to the Inner-circle Alliance. If the Swarm’s forces were depleted here, their combat quality and quantity would fall far behind the Ji race once the real fighting began.
After weighing all factors, the alliance ca up with a new solution: combine near and long-range tactics. Swarm units would clear mines from near to far, while Alliance warships and Swarm artillery platforms conducted long-range coverage fire, clearing from far to near.
This hybrid approach greatly accelerated mine-clearing efforts. Yet, there was no celebration within the Inner-circle Alliance. The reason? The Ji race had deployed an unknown number of specialized vessels to lay new minefields. Their logistics lines, delivering weapons and supplies, even ford a solid chain behind enemy lines.
Moreover, the Ji’s mine deploynt speed far outpaced the alliance’s mine-clearing progress. While this avoidance tactic did compress the Ji race’s own strategic depth, it didn’t matter much—after all, the Ji race had been the de facto rulers of this region for millions of years. Even without territorial expansion, they still controlled hundreds of star systems.
At this rate, even if the war dragged on for hundreds or thousands of years, the Ji race would lose only a dozen or so systems—hardly significant.
“This can’t go on.”
“I agree. I have a very bad feeling. The more the Ji race does this, the worse it feels.”
“Sa here.”
“But we don’t have a good way to counter this.”
“Damn it! If the Ji race’s territory were limited to just what they hold now, then by sticking to our current strategy, they would eventually have nowhere left to retreat. They’d run out of resources and lose. We’d be willing to spend a thousand—even ten thousand years to win that way. But they’ve got nearly a thousand external Star Gates funneling weapons, equipnt, and resources back to their holand. They’re completely unfazed by this kind of attritional warfare!”
“Then we need to change tactics. While maintaining pressure on the front lines, we must open up external battlefronts. If troop numbers are a limiting factor, then let’s conscript personnel from Mid-ring and even Outer-ring civilizations. The Ji race isn’t making any moves right now, so they can’t oppose our orders anyway.”
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