I Am The Swarm-Chapter 792: Fuel to the Fire
As the contact area between the two forces expanded, the intensity of the war escalated accordingly—and so did the casualties.
Through data analysis, the Alliance discovered that the Ji warships did not carry the new unmanned fighter drones at full capacity. The Inner-circle Alliance was deeply familiar with the specifications of Ji standard warships, and the drone’s exterior dimensions were easily observable from outside. Internally, though modifications were possible, the original structural layout had been refined through countless iterations—changing it rashly would only weaken the ship’s defensive capabilities.
It seemed unlikely the Ji would compromise the performance of their warships just to make room for more drones.
Based on the drone’s size and the hangar space of a Ji warship, the Inner-circle Alliance estimated that a fully outfitted vessel could carry 3,000 of the new drones.
However, after compiling data from the battlefield, it was apparent that the Ji warships carried fewer than half that amount. Initially, the Alliance suspected that some ships still carried older models, leaving less room for the new ones.
But as time passed and no old-style drones appeared on the battlefield—or among the debris of destroyed vessels—they came to a different conclusion: the Ji Race had not mass-produced these drones to avoid revealing their existence. The current batch was likely produced only in the past few decades. And with ships being manufactured in large quantities as well, they had yet to reach full deployment.
For the Anti-Ji Alliance, this was encouraging news. It meant that the crystalline barrier defense system lacked half of its potential reinforcement supply.
On the other hand, the Swarm’s support for this war was unprecedented. Especially after the Swarm Empress’s return, their level of commitment visibly increased.
Now, the sixteen operational Star Gates remained constantly active, with endless streams of Swarm units teleporting in from their homeland and joining the war effort.
Thanks to this, the Inner-circle Alliance had an abundant supply of units they can use as shields—and this surplus was expected to continue for the foreseeable future.
After three months of fighting, about five billion troops from each side had engaged. Around this time, the Swarm’s long-range units also arrived on the front lines.
The first wave included five million Puffer Cannonfish, which joined the fray alongside a new batch of Primordial bodies. Though similar in size (about 500 meters long), the Puffer Cannonfish sacrificed melee capabilities in exchange for massively enhanced long-range firepower.
While the Primordial body usually carried just two main cannons scaled to their body length, each Puffer Cannonfish packed over ten. Though still inferior in firepower to the Ji warships (which were over 3,000 meters long and equipped with 16 to 64 main cannons), they helped offset the Swarm’s lack of long-range support.
And realistically, it wasn’t even a fair comparison: 500-meter units vs. 3,000-meter capital ships. A single Ji warship cost far more to build. For the same resources, the Swarm could produce vastly more Puffer Cannonfish—giving them a quantitative advantage to compensate for the firepower gap.
Five million Puffer Cannonfish amounted to the firepower of about two million Alliance warships. In a battlefield with fifty billion total combatants, this didn’t yet tilt the scales dramatically.
But that was just the first wave. These long-range units were about as fast as the Primordial body, but early on, the Swarm prioritized building the defensive line—so the vanguard initially lacked Puffer Cannonfish.
Now that the defense network was established and there was a surplus of Primordial body reinforcements, deploying more of them would only crowd the battlefield and limit their firepower capacity.
Thus, the Swarm began mass-deploying Puffer Cannonfish to send to the frontline.
Following their encounters with the Ji Race, the Swarm had studied any wreckages and absorbed various technologies. After forming an alliance with the Inner-circle civilizations, they further refined and adapted these advancements—upgrading their artillery capabilities.
In these artillery duels, the Puffer Cannonfish had already reached comparable levels of range and firepower to both Ji and Alliance fleets. Moreover, their smaller size allowed for higher density deployment—yielding more main cannons per square kilometer of battlefield.
Three more months passed, and the number of Puffer Cannonfish in combat reached twenty billion. The total number of deployed combatants now approached one hundred billion.
Given the similar technologies used by both sides—and the less visible dark energy shells (as opposed to the bright, red violent beams of the past)—and the sheer number of projectiles, it became impossible to tell who had fired what or where it was going.
In the endless void of space, two dazzling “galaxies” stretched for billions of kilometers, facing one another. A closer look revealed their light came from warship spotlights, thruster trails, the bioluminescence of Swarm units, and the endless explosions of destroyed ships.
At this scale, even with both sides strengthening their defenses and keeping overall loss rates relatively low, the absolute number of destroyed warships was staggering.
Because the crystalline defense network of the Ji Race was slightly weaker than the Swarm’s Primordial bodies defense, the Ji suffered more losses over this six-month period compared to the Inner-circle Alliance.
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By the year 226 of the New Era, a full year had passed since the war began. The number of engaged units had reached over 150 billion.
Due to the new drones being more fragile, combined with their lower numbers, the resulting domino effect caused the Ji’s casualty rate to steadily rise, putting them at a disadvantage on certain localized fronts.
This wasn’t yet decisive to the outcome, but as the saying goes: a thousand-mile dike is ruined by an ant hole. If this erosion continued, the quantitative change would eventually trigger a qualitative shift—and the Ji Race would face defeat.
The Ji clearly recognized this. One year into the war, they introduced a new combat unit.
From the rear of the Ji lines, two colossal objects approached. Though they appeared to be moving slowly, they were actually advancing at high speed.
They were roughly spherical, each over 5,000 kilometers in diameter, constructed entirely from synthetic metals. From a distance, they looked like a pair of giant metallic spheres.
They were, in fact, Battle Stars—undeniably megastructure-class units.
