Worthless

“It’s time to teach them how important air superiority is.”

The moment the Great Devourer lost air superiority during its first encounter with the Winged Squad, the elven elite aerial unit, Lin Miao felt that he could not simply provide materials to induce evolution. He also had to make the Great Devourer understand the importance of the sky.

Before this, the Great Devourer had indeed made good use of the advantage of air superiority.

However, this was not because they valued the sky, but rather because no other force could contend with them for it.

Even those formidable Hero-grade individuals had to keep both feet on the ground to exert their full combat power, and Astaroth’s magitech civilization and system struggled even to cultivate a land army centered around defensive lines.

But now that they had encountered a new opponent, this mindset had to change.

No matter how much the history he knew differed from the future the Great Devourer would face, the truth that those who controlled the sky were more likely to emerge victorious remained eternal.

“Hmm, play another toy game?”

As Lin Miao pondered how to convey this concept to the Great Devourer, he quickly thought of a method he had used before.

Conveying an oracle through Celia, who would then pass it on to Elise, was convenient but would consume interference force. Furthermore, relaying the message twice could easily lead to misunderstandings.

Thus, he decided to use that tried-and-true method once again.

Using a remote-controlled toy airplane to directly demonstrate his will to the Great Devourer.

Previously, to tell them the weakness of the golems, he had used a toy robot to explain the concept of a power source.

【Elise confirmed the intense will of the Great One】

As it turned out, his judgment was correct.

When the remote-controlled helicopter he operated flew back and forth over the terrarium, wreaking “havoc,” Elise—having prior experience and possessing a more developed intellect and comprehension than before—instantly understood his meaning.

“The sky is extremely important. I want you to take control of it.”

The Great Devourer had long known the advantage of overlooking from the air. The Great One, Lin Miao, was simply emphasizing this point to them once again.

【Elise ordered the deployment of more resources】

Other matters could be negotiated, but as long as it was Lin Miao’s words, they had to be obeyed unconditionally.

Since Elise, the original and most powerful self-awareness of the colony who also suppressed the growth of other self-awarenesses, thought this way, the colony naturally acted according to Lin Miao’s will.

Not only did they produce the new flying species, the Skimmer Bugs, but they also further modified existing flying individuals like dragonflies and tiger-hornets, creating a wide variety of aerial combat units.

【The vassals have prepared for battle in accordance with the Great One’s will】

‘…Even faster than I anticipated.’

Lin Miao’s influence over the colony far exceeded his own imagination.

Elise, to whom he had bestowed a name, had long since regarded him as her creator, father, and the great spiritual entity that coexisted with the colony.

Watching this massive force mobilize as one solely based on a single thought of his, a wave of warmth surged in his heart.

...

“Si... Sillian!”

“All units, retreat! Retreat quickly! We can’t fight at all without reforming our formation!”

Under Lin Miao’s emphasis, the Great Devourer acted swiftly toward this single goal.

This was structurally unimaginable to the elves, where every individual possessed an independent self-awareness.

They could not fathom how thoroughly, rapidly, and uniformly this massive collective driven by his will could move.

Of course, the elves were also noble warriors willing to sacrifice their lives for the future of their race and the victory of their comrades.

But the Great Devourer ambushing them at this moment went far beyond them.

From the moment of their birth, every single one of their cells existed solely for the colony and for Lin Miao.

“Ah... Ahhh!”

Relying on its speed and flight techniques, a Skimmer Bug caught up with a member of the Winged Squad who was gliding on the wind. It grabbed him with its thick, spike-covered front legs, then instantly pierced through his back and heart with its sharp mouthparts.

This mouthpart, resembling a massive awl, was just one of the Great Devourer’s countless weapons.

Agonized screams echoed one after another as fragments of internal organs and fresh blood rained down upon the ground.

Precious pure-blooded elves were being slaughtered in batches.

“Damn it!”

Watching her comrades fall one by one, Sillian’s face turned pale. She notched an arrow and drew her bow, attempting to snipe the Skimmer Bugs. However, the Skimmer Bugs, sharing vision and senses among all individuals and moving with incredible agility, nimbly dodged just outside her arrows’ range.

Sneaking up from behind for a one-hit kill was their specialty.

And the fatal weakness of the elven Winged Squad was their inability to attack directly above their gliders.

“No, I can’t die here! I didn’t come all this way just to die here!”

Sillian hurriedly turned around, desperately flying toward the higher skies.

Countless Skimmer Bugs followed closely behind.

As an ace of the first-generation Winged Squad, she executed dazzling aerobatic maneuvers, desperately resisting by shooting arrows and throwing the small bombs she carried.

Although the Skimmer Bugs possessed high speed and maneuverability, they sacrificed much of their defense to achieve this.

Sillian’s arrows and bombs managed to shoot down quite a few Skimmer Bugs.

“Ha... Ha...”

Flying to an altitude she had never reached before, Sillian gasped heavily for air.

Her physical strength was completely depleted, and the capsule used to control the wind spirits had very little energy left.

“I have lived for two hundred years. I didn’t survive this long just to die at the hands of things like you.”

A bitter smile curled on the corner of her lips as she relished the brief thrill of surviving the ordeal.

‘When did...?’

Just then, a massive figure silently flew up behind her and grabbed her.

The terrified Sillian turned her head with great difficulty, seeing a monster tightly binding her body with six powerful legs.

It had the head of an ant, the body of a bee, the overall shape of a dragonfly, and two pairs of massive wings composed entirely of feathers.

It was precisely this pair of feathered wings that allowed it to fly silently and perform ultra-high-speed flights despite dragging a massive body comparable to a four-person carriage.

“He—”

The monster bit and crushed her head in one mouthful.

Her skull shattered, her beautiful face reduced to mush, and her final, terror-filled plea was silenced forever.

“No!”

Through the real-time projection, Virgil witnessed the horrific sight of his niece being killed in an instant.

This brutal method of crushing the skull made it seem as though they did not care in the least about the integrity of the corpse.

And it didn’t end there.

The Great Devourer chewed Sillian’s corpse into pieces on the spot and threw them to the ground.

The busy worker ants would immediately transport these fragments to the digestive pool to be turned into nutrient solution.

They never took prisoners.

Even a precious, pure-blooded elven noble was nothing more than an ordinary piece of meat once defeated.

“You damned bugs... How could you do this?!”

Elves had long lifespans but struggled to reproduce, resulting in a scarce population. Consequently, they possessed a very strong sense of racial kinship and placed extreme importance on funerals for the deceased.

Although Virgil and his cohorts, who called themselves the “new elves,” had once betrayed and exiled the elders and other old factions, they believed even more firmly that elves must stick together to wash away that sin.

In their culture and common sense, the remains of the deceased had to be fully restored, followed by a grand funeral.

Therefore, having a corpse dismembered and ultimately mixed with the bodies of countless other races and beasts to be turned into nutrient solution was an apocalyptic curse and horror to the elves.

Furthermore, the deceased was his beloved niece, a pure-blooded elf destined to rule the vast empire in the future.

“Calm down, sir! They are about to launch an attack on us from both the air and the ground simultaneously!”

The surrounding soldiers hurriedly held back the furious Virgil.

If the commander-in-chief lost his mind, it would be utterly impossible for them—having already lost air superiority—to block the Great Devourer’s offensive.

“Bring out all the cannons! Load the large-caliber elven cannons with canister shot! Bring down the sky first!”

The enraged Virgil poured all his military forces into directing the battle, engaging in a life-or-death struggle against the Great Devourer.

Had he realized sooner that the Great Devourer’s learning, analytical, and self-modification capabilities were beyond reason, he should have gradually revealed his trump cards to maintain a balance of power.

But unlike the Great Devourer, which always calculated calmly, Sillian’s death caused him to easily expose his entire strength.

“This is a disaster! A massive swarm of evil monsters has landed in the Kingdom of Bartonia! They are plundering and killing everywhere, and they are building a large number of nests!”

“Lord Guardian, an emergency notification from the Central Council has arrived! All legions are ordered to halt their current wars of conquest and concentrate all their forces to subjugate the Great Devourer!”

Just then, two urgent messages arrived in quick succession.

The invasion colony led by Celia had destroyed the transport fleet and successfully landed in the rear.

And the Elven Empire finally realized that they could no longer leave the war against the Great Devourer to a single legion, deciding to launch an all-out war.

‘It seems this war will drag on for a very, very long time.’

Lin Miao had mixed feelings as he watched the strengthening Great Devourer and the enemies who had suffered multiple blows yet still had not collapsed.

If the current Great Devourer were to attack the former Lucadia Empire’s defense line, it would undoubtedly breach it in an instant and raze the empire to the ground.

This world, influenced by deities, was constantly changing and growing stronger in such an incredibly short amount of time.

Just as the Earth Lin Miao lived on had undergone earth-shattering changes in a mere twenty years.

However, with the continuous expansion of forces, almost all native powers—whether colonized, annexed, or completely wiped out—had already been brought under the rule of the deities.

In other words, once this massive enemy was defeated, the competition for the world of Terra would likely come to an end immediately.

‘But this is only the end in this world.’

Of course, he already knew many secrets.

The deities would never be satisfied with just a single planet, and those whom he would compete against and defeat were precisely these deities.

“Keep moving forward. You want this too, don't you?”

Lin Miao smiled slightly as he looked at Elise’s face on the screen.

As if she had heard his words, Elise, who was quietly accepting nutrient solution fed to her by the worker ants, shook her tentacle-like hair. Her eyes beneath the mask flickered, and she raised her head.