The Mech Touch

Chapter 7245: Superswarm Hive

The Goliath Hive sounded like a formidable threat, especially in the long term. The combat footage showed that the Goliaths were largely oversized voribugs for the time being, but nobody believed they would remain that simple. It was highly likely that they would continue to develop their own advantages and pose a credible threat against high-ranking mechs and phase leaders. It was easy to dismiss the Goliath Hive as copycats, but it was not always a bad thing to imitate the best practices of your enemies. The voribugs may be a lot different from the other races, but it should have plenty of ways to accommodate the so-called Goliaths into their ranks.

"The Goliath Hive is the least intensive hive that the Rubarthans are facing at the moment." Eliza Mo Ragadan said. "The excessive emphasis on developing Goliaths requires high-quality materials that are scarce and hard to find in most star systems. It is difficult to develop a new strain or improve it while still making them resource efficient. The hive must be squandering a large amount of resources on acquiring the right materials and developing the most cost-effective strains. All of this activity has caused the Goliath Hive to pressure the least amount of star systems... for the time being."

The unspoken implication was that the Goliath voribugs would become a lot scarier once it had completed the development of mature Goliath strains and was able to pump them out by the thousands!

"What about the next hive?"

"The Superswarm Hive largely follows the opposite strategy. It has given up entirely on fielding elite units and instead focuses solely on consuming enemies by relying on quantity alone. This particular hive most closely follows the original strategy of the mutated voribugs, but that does not mean that it is simple. The Superswarm Hive has chosen to be more deliberate in how to utilize its forces."

The combat footage that highlighted the Superswarm Hive all depicted unending tides of bugs with bright and obvious orange coloring. Similar to the Riot Mark III, these bugs had no intention of hiding themselves and wanted to attract as much attention to themselves. Their numbers were awe-inspiring. They lacked the enormous Goliaths, but made up for it by throwing wave after wave of cannon fodder into the Rubarthan defenses. When met with a large amount of wide area weapon attacks, millions if not tens of millions of bugs died with every passing second. Yet that did not deter all of the other voribugs in the slightest. They kept coming and battering themselves against the azure energy shields or armor plating of the defending troops. Orange. Orange everywhere. Many defenders who failed to retreat in time became drowned in a tide of orange.

"The Superswarm Hive has made a number of strategic adjustments after coming into existence." The leader of staff continued to explain. "It has chosen to invade star systems by starting from the outer system and occupying as many asteroids and terrestrial planets as possible. These locations are usually poor in high-quality resources, but still offer more than enough low-quality materials to support the proliferation of large amounts of cannon fodder. It is virtually impossible to stop the Superswarmers once they have entered the star system. The outer asteroid belts are too large and while they are all cold and distant locations, the voribugs are still capable of generating energy by consuming certain materials that are common in asteroids."

That meant that the Superswarmers started out slow, but could not be stopped. Eradicating them was too much work. It took a enormous amount of manpower or long-ranged detection systems that did not exist as of yet to nip the invasion in the bud. Once the Superswarm voribugs had spread across enough asteroids, they could finally launch wave after wave of cannon fodder at the human positions without worrying about losing any ground. The human defenders had no choice but to stay on the defensive if they wanted to preserve all of their settlements! Being outnumbered on a permanent basis meant that there was no way the defenders had any mechs or warships to spare for any counterattacks.

It would be useless to send a small task force to the outer system. The speed of wiping out the asteroids that the Superswarm Hive transformed into organic mass production facilities could never keep up with the rate in which the voribugs established new growing pools! The Superswarm Hive clearly committed everything on attrition warfare. Its princess cared nothing for producing more powerful voribugs. Every opposition could be worn down as long as the Superswarmers continued to exploit the abundant amount of low-quality resources in most star systems.

"As much as I dislike it, the Ascended Giants are not equipped to fight against the Superswarm Hive." The Divine Harpoon said. "We can rely on our spatial abilities to slay voribugs on an enormous scale, but we can only keep up this effort for several hours at most before we reach exhaustion. Our true bodies have excellent endurance, but even we can tire ourselves out if we keep swinging our weapons. I do not recommend we target the Superswarm Hive."

The others nodded as well. None of them were stupid. The Superswarm Hive needed to be defeated by a force that could adequately wipe out masses of voribugs without getting exhausted. Yet that was seemingly impossible, with even god pilots choosing to avoid this disgusting enemy due to their shameless approach.

"I agree with you, at least for now. Maybe Ves or other brilliant people can devise a weapon that can slaughter entire swarms and stop the aliens from draining the natural bounty of a star system to fuel their need to produce offspring, but that will take time and require the involvement of special groups that we do not fall under."

"I would not be so quick to dismiss your lack of agency, sir." Andrea Vos spoke up. "The Red Collective has not remained idle while the mutated voribugs have proven themselves to be an existential threat to our race and civilization. My fellow formation masters and I have remained in contact with the Astral Octagon and other locations. We have developed the most rudimentary version of a plan."

She waved her hand, causing another projection to appear. It was part of a virtual document that outlined a planet that was being surrounded by an energy shield of sort that enveloped the entire globe!

"Impossible." Eliza Mo Ragadan frowned immediately. "Building an enormous azure shield generator is pointless even if the tech and materials are available. The energy requirements to keep it running is astronomical to an unbelievable degree. Even then, so long as the Superswarmers keep crashing into it by the billions, the azure energy shield will collapse after reaching its limit."

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The Farseer smirked back at the other woman. "That would normally be the case if we are talking about a technological energy shield. The finite supply of electric energy or resources that can be converted into electric energy will doom any attempt to shield a planet from a voribug invasion. In the end, every power source will reach exhaustion if the components have not worn out first. What the Red Collective can offer is an alternative that is more sustainable. Have you figured it out yet, sir?"

It took a few seconds for the Dark Apostle to connect the dots. He suddenly recalled Andrea Vos' profession.

"Are you talking about... shielding a planet by relying on qi formations?"

"Yes! There are formation masters who have chosen to specialize in developing and deploying defensive spell arrays. They have already begun to make them and employ them to defend important locations such as the Astral Octagon and other critical sites. Their effective ranges varies considerably. The largest defensive arrays can probably offer modest defensive shielding on a medium-sized metropolis, but are prohibitively expensive to make. However, their greatest advantage is that the costs are all upfront. So long as the hideously costly formation anchors are deployed and activated, the spell array can run at a relatively low intensity for an indefinite period of time."

"Because they run on E energy, not electric energy." The Dark Apostle widened his eyes in realization. "I see. E energy radiation is a free energy source for all intents and purposes. As long as you can deploy a defensive qi formation that can cover an important colony, the voribugs won't be able to take it down by relying on masses of weak cannon fodder."

"That is the ideal that we are striving for." The Farseer said. "However, we are only in the early stages of making this happen. We, the body of formation masters, have to complete numerous advancements before we can complete such an ambitious project. Scale is the greatest problem. It is not enough to deploy a city-wide defensive spell array. We may be able to shield a city from the voribug menace, but that will not help when the rest of the planet is literally being devoured by trillions of hungry insects."

If the voribugs wanted to, they could literally eat the planet underneath the settlement in question!

"I can see why that may be the case. What else?"

"The second major problem is power. A weak defensive qi formation can withstand attacks up to a certain intensity. The input of E energy must match or exceed the peak consumption of E energy when the qi formation is under heavy attack. This is a challenge as E energy radiation is not that strong. The only way to capture more E energy per second is to create larger and better formation anchors."

The Dark Apostle understood this problem easily enough. Free energy did not translate into having an infinite amount of energy available at any point of time. Just like how wind turbines could only spin so fast when the wind was not blowing particularly hard, a medium-energy environment was unable to support the demands of a particularly hungry qi formation.

There was a simple solution to this problem, though.

"If E energy radiation alone is not enough to support a formation, why not create batteries that can store excess E energy. That way, you can slowly use them up when the voribugs make a particularly big push."

"That is one of the ideas that we have been exploring." The Farseer replied. "It may not solve the problem if the voribugs keep attacking until the reserves have been drained, but they should at least be able to buy time. However, there is also a third problem, which is cost. The research projects that go into developing formation anchors and 'E energy batteries' are prohibitively expensive, especially if they are designed to operate at a planetary scale. There is a high degree of urgency when it comes to reducing their cost."

Even if this research effort succeeded, the Red Collective could not justify the decision to deploy this defensive measure on any planet. Perhaps only the most critical and economically important globes would enjoy this treatment. The Rubarthan Pact was not weak or penniless by any means, but the pressure of defending against the mutated voribugs had put a enormous strain on its finances. Combined with the burden of offering heavy concessions to the Cybernetic Empire in exchange for vital military aid, the Rubarthans simply could not afford to deploy planetary-scale defensive spell arrays across the entire frontlines.

"The third major problem is the most serious one as far as I can see." The female formation master added. "The first two problems are due to lack of research and development. We have not invested enough in large-scale defensive qi formations. Once we concentrate our efforts in this area and achieve results, we will be able to create viable solutions. What hinders us is that viable does not necessarily equate to practical or economical. There is only so much E energy radiation that we can draw from the environment."

This was indeed a tricky problem.

"If this does not work out, then I hope that others can develop a better solution. I have no interest in seeing the mutated voribugs devour the entire Red Ocean."