Chapter 603: Lord of the Swarm
Gu Hang heard a story while Moro was telling the story.
In this story, the Ironclad were once not much different from many other loyalist chapters in the Empire.
They are loyal, brave and wise. In the Princess Star Region, they unite with the Fury and Stone Shield regiments to firmly lock down the place known as the 'Insect Plague Star Region'.
It was a star region originally named Ankaya, but it had been destroyed long ago. A plague of insects broke out here, and a Zerg fleet emerged from the uninhabited void and destroyed the star region in a very short time. The Ironclad Warband, whose home planet was in the Empress Star Region, responded to the call for help and defeated this not-so-powerful Zerg fleet.
But the crisis had just begun, and they only repelled the vanguard fleet.
In the 14 worlds of this insect-infested star zone, insects kept popping up. It was as if a huge Zerg tentacle fleet was on the way, rushing towards the "insect-infested star zone" wave after wave without passing through the space tunnel of the star realm.
The Iron Armor Regiment is guarding here firmly and working diligently.
They built a defense line in the "Insect Plague Star Zone". When the enemies were few and weak, they could still control the situation within this star zone. But when the situation was bad, the defense in the star zone collapsed, and the enemies ravaged the entire star field and even expanded to the universe.
First, the Cosmic Region Government, and then the Imperial Central Government, gradually paid attention to the persistent problems in this area. All parties began to increase their investment in the defense of the insect-infested star zone, and the first to bear the brunt of the priority support was naturally the Iron Armored Regiment, which had always been fighting on the front line.
Even the Empire knew from the beginning that the Ironclad Regiment had an excess of personnel, but they turned a blind eye to it because it was necessary.
Firstly, the Iron Armor was always losing people and making sacrifices, so the troops had to be replenished at any time. Even the support provided by the Empire included population support from all parties, which allowed them to better screen new soldiers and allowed them to recruit soldiers from every world in the Imperial Star Region. There was no way to strictly control the number of people to 1,000, otherwise, if a war broke out and hundreds of people were lost, it would be impossible to make up for it temporarily.
Secondly, if the number of troops is strictly limited to 1,000, the situation in the Princess Star Region cannot be controlled at all. Either the Empire will throw more resources, more warbands, and more fleets, or allow the Iron Armor to exceed the limit. It has to choose one. And the result is also obvious. The Empire chose the latter. Instead of pursuing the Iron Armor's excessive births, it will give more support. Just hold off the Zerg for me.
The actual situation was just as the Empire expected. The Iron Armor Regiment, together with a few allied regiments and the power of the Princess Star Domain, was able to hold off the insect plague.
For disasters of the same scale, the Empire often has to pay a price far exceeding this figure to quell them. Not to mention, the Zerg Star Region is a continuous disaster. Unless a dark expedition is launched to the dark outer regions that are not connected by the astral tunnels and the Zerg fleet comes from to eradicate the problem, the Zerg here will appear to be a place that is constantly refreshing, large and small.
It would be great if we could get it done at this price.
During this period, the Alfonzo sect provided resources to the Iron Armor on behalf of the Empire, and then simply established a very good trade relationship with the Iron Armor Warband. Their home base, Alfonzo, was next to the Empress Star Region, and they also had to rely on the Iron Armor to block the insects. In addition, the large number of void insect beast corpses and even living samples provided by the Iron Armor were also what the Alfonzo sect wanted very much.
These strange, powerful and very inspiring creatures are of great help to the Alfonzo sect in conducting some special research. Even the corpses of some low-level Zerg have great value as biological materials when recycled.
Some of the armored units produced by the Alfonzo sect are reshaped and built using the Zerg's chitinous shell, which is comparable to steel.
They have been cooperating like this for a long time, and their relationship is getting better and better.
In this case, the Empire is not really worried about the situation getting out of control. Although Ironclad has received tacit approval and even additional support, with a star field as its backing and a powerful Mechanicus with three Forge Worlds as its ally, the threat of the hive they face is always there and very serious. Their strength is always being depleted, which should be similar to the reinforcements they have received.
Compared with their growing power, the Empire was more worried for a long time whether the Iron Armor would not receive enough support to resist the infestation.
Tiekai himself was also worried about this.
Of course, it is also possible that Humphrey Paul already had certain ambitions at that time.
Things changed one hundred and eighty years ago when they captured a... strange larva.
Later, the Alfonzo sect conducted research on this and believed that this was a queen of the Void Zerg, or the larva of a mother Zerg.
The birth of the Void Zerg mainly relies on the Queen. She designs and produces all the Void Zerg beasts in an entire hive fleet, even the Zerg's living ships.
The Queen is also the core of the hive fleet. Once it is destroyed, it means that the hive fleet has lost the ability to reproduce. Both the living ships and the hatcheries placed on the surface of the planet will no longer function.
At the same time, she is also the highest node creature of the entire hive fleet. Her death also means that the entire hive fleet has lost unified coordination and command at the macro level. Lower node creatures, such as the hive overlord, hive tyrant, and neuroprotozoa, can still command their troops, but they have directly lost their coordination ability. No longer able to support each other quickly, the swarm will be very easy to be divided and destroyed.
Of course, the swarm also has a mechanism for response.
Before this, the queen will hatch multiple larvae. This is the only known Zerg creature that has a larval stage.
These larvae are inactive when the queen is present. Once the queen dies, they will become active, fight and devour each other, and eventually grow into a new queen.
The lower-level Zerg creatures will quickly reconnect with the new Queen. This stage means that the new Queen takes over the entire swarm of the mother.
The Ironclads, under the personal leadership of Humphrey Paul, raided the heart of an invading, small-scale Hive Fleet, and very bravely, even desperately, boarded one of the largest Zerg ships.
They were called ships, but in reality they were giant, specialized creatures as large as starships, and they were alive. Boarding a ship was like sending yourself into the belly of a giant beast.
They not only had to face the huge number of enemies that had hatched, but also had to face the changes in the biological ship's internal structure. These changes were all aimed at killing them, such as suddenly spraying strong corrosive liquids, or shooting bone nails...
No one knows how Humphrey Paul did it, but he completed this almost impossible task, beheaded and killed the queen of the swarm, and returned successfully.
Taking this opportunity, the Zerg fleet was completely annihilated, and humanity once again achieved a glorious victory.
However, only a few people know that when Humphrey Paul returned, he also brought back larvae.
They killed all the other larvae and took this one away before it could grow and take over the hive fleet.
After the swarm was destroyed, the larva had no one to command, its development was severely slowed due to malnutrition, and there was no more biomass to provide her with to produce insect-beasts... Just like that, she was imprisoned and sent to the Alfonzo sect.
They called it 'Princess'.
The Alfonzo sect was overjoyed, but this was not a gift from Paul, but a top-secret mission: to study the queen insect in order to control the insect swarm.
…
This is all Sebastian Moreau knows.
He was a high-ranking member of Alfonzo's sect and one of the three Forge Generals, but even he only knew about this incident that happened one hundred and eighty years ago.
In fact, apart from the images he shared with Gu Hang, which he saw with his own eyes, many other things were investigated and even guessed by him, and may not be completely reliable.
But that's probably it.
As for what happened afterwards, he had no accurate information or evidence at all.
The great sage Martin Valuk took over the research work personally, and only the sage Dubo was his assistant and participated in the project.
At the same time, the Great Sage also kept it as the sect's top secret. Among the people who accompanied him to receive the larvae, except for the three forging generals and one main business sage, the rest had their self-consciousness and memory parts of their brains removed and were made into mechanical servants to ensure that the information would not be leaked.
That is to say, in the entire Alfonzo sect, no one knew except the five of them - oh, it should be four now, because Sage Dubo died when the sect attacked the Proud Claw Star Region before.
However, not knowing the exact situation does not prevent Moreau from making guesses.
Otherwise, the larvae cultivation failed, but this possibility now seems extremely low.
Where did the imprisoned neurozoa come from on Alfonzo II's war ark? Where did the technology to enslave and control them come from?
I'm afraid they are all the results of research on the Queen of Insects.
But are they just using the Queen of Insects to develop and apply these technologies?
Moreau didn't believe it.
He believed that the Great Sage had not rejected Humphrey Paul's request and mission. The technologies related to the Void Zerg, including the neurozoan, were probably just byproducts of the research. The ultimate goal of this project was to produce and control the Zerg.
Not just one or two bugs, but a whole swarm of bugs.
Humphrey Paul wanted this, and rightfully so!
This would directly address the problems his Chapter currently faces.
Being able to control the Queen Zerg means that you can raise a large swarm of Zerg to fight against invading Zergs; when facing invading Zergs, if you have a Queen Zerg, you can even compete for control of the opponent's lower-level creatures.
Going a step further, how could solving the current problems of the regiment be the limit?
Once you control the Queen of Insects and a swarm of insects that can expand at will, there will be a lot of things you can do in the future.
Considering the current situation, Varuk's research is likely to have been successful.
Based on this premise, we can explain the questions that Gu Hang had thought about before.
There are swarms of insects blocking the northern front, extraordinary 'mortal' troops on the western front, and enslaved neurozoa on the southern front...
And why Humphrey Paul wanted to fight McGregor in the full domain.
According to normal logic, he really couldn't quickly transform the production capacity and population of the Magre Universe into his own war potential. But if he could control a swarm of insects, it would be completely different: if he let the swarm of insects go and let them eat a few waves of big ones, how powerful would the swarm of insects be?
Gu Hang didn’t even dare to think about it!
Why didn't Iron Armor use this trick before? The possible reason is that this matter is still too ridiculous. Letting the Zerg eat the world will greatly shake Iron Armor's base, or they may still have some bottom line.
But as the war situation worsened, it was obviously not going to work if the Iron Armors did nothing and relied on their own strength.
Defeating and destroying the Phoenix on the western front was clearly an act of breaking the bottom line. The power of the Zerg was definitely involved.
But the degree of involvement may not be strong, and they may even be involved only in key battles. Many survivors of the Empire in the battle could only give some ambiguous information after the war, and they themselves did not witness it with their own eyes.
However, the bottom line will not be broken only once.
After defeating Phoenix, what they will face next is the even more fierce wrath of the High Lords. The Ortopis Chapter and the coalition of several other chapters, the attacks of the Imperial Solar Astra Army and the Solar Fleet will all bring even greater pressure.
On the contrary, Tiekai suffered heavy losses after his victory.
With one side gaining and the other losing, why are they fighting McGregor? Are they just playing for fun?
Gu Hang could already imagine the scene where countless digestion pools and incubation pools were set up on each world on Magre, the world of the empire fell into deathly silence, and the Zerg was born from it.
…
With a long sigh of relief, Gu Hang sent Sebastian Moreau away.
He sorted out the materials himself, writing down clearly which were confirmed intelligence and which were speculations.
He would distribute these as detailed reports to the imperial center and the war situation on the northern front.
It’s up to you guys to decide.
If the sky falls, the tall man will hold it up.
So you tall people, you have to be mentally prepared.
Although Gu Hang had warned them before, it was still just a guess and a possibility. But now, it was basically confirmed, and they could also roughly estimate the means they might use and guess their strategic goals in the Magre Universe.
Much more persuasive.
Another thing to do is to wage a war of public opinion.
Humphrey Paul and Martin Valuk are not afraid, does every armored warrior below know it?
Do the other groups that followed Paul know about this?
Do you know every world that Tiekai controls?
Insects are there to eat people.
Now, the big boss you follow, when the war becomes difficult to fight, how will he feed his swarm of insects?
The alliance’s intelligence organization is about to start taking action.
At the same time, Gu Hang also has to consider whether he should continue to stick to his plan of waiting for a year and a half.
The information brought by Moreau is of extraordinary value.
————
This chapter makes up for yesterday.
There is more in the evening.
(End of this chapter)
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