Mass Upgrade

Considering the test, connecting a distance of 1,000 kilometers was too slow, so Xia Jin had the creature extend itself for only 2 kilometers.

Once it was ready, a creature resembling a building appeared before her.

With a thought, the structure suddenly opened.

A group of zerglings immediately entered. After running just a few steps, they leaped out from the opening on the other side.

“A ten-meter opening?”

Xia Jin looked at the tunnel and felt reasonably satisfied.

Based on these dimensions, it could just barely allow an ultralisk to charge through it.

“I'll try it again after an ultralisk is born.”

She sat nearby and waited leisurely for a while until an ultralisk was finally born.

Its massive body ran forward a few steps, making the ground feel as if it were vibrating.

Xia Jin tried having the ultralisk swing its scythe blades. In an instant, a terrifying gale blew up as the ultralisk's blades sliced through a nearby boulder, while its foot simultaneously crushed another stone into fine powder.

After a few attempts, the ultralisk turned around and charged into the mouth of the nydus worm.

Looking at its size, it was just under ten meters, allowing it to barely squeeze through.

“Very good.”

Xia Jin was basically satisfied with this.

The combat power was definitely the real deal.

Producing a Tier 8 heavy-armored unit for 10,000 units of standard energy was an incredible bargain.

Soon, this kind of creature would be used in sieges. She could already imagine the scene where the Kingdom's forces would be utterly helpless despite their best efforts when facing such terrifying armor.

“Excellent. From now on, you'll be my mount.”

Xia Jin felt that sitting on the back of an ultralisk was much steadier. Unlike the zerglings, whose jerky leaps were unstable and killed her style.

With a thought from her, the ultralisk excitedly lowered its body.

After two agile movements, Xia Jin easily reached the ultralisk's back.

The great monster stood up.

“This is nice. The field of vision is broad, and it's very stable.”

It proved that no matter how terrifying an insect was, they were all like well-behaved babies in front of the Queen, as obedient as could be.

The ultralisk's appearance wasn't actually as horrifying as many other insects. In fact, from an enemy's perspective, it even looked somewhat majestic.

“Now I can prepare to upgrade the tiers of the existing Swarm.”

She hadn't realized it until she sat down to calculate, but once Xia Jin crunched the numbers for the current Swarm's production needs, she found that if she continued at the previous output levels, the current resource production would be far from enough.

The total cost for just 10,000 zerglings reached as high as 1.5 million units of standard energy.

2,000 hydralisks cost a staggering 2.4 million units.

And then there were the banelings—2,000 of them cost 1.6 million units. If they continued to be used as consumables, the rate of energy consumption would be absurdly fast.

But...

The banelings were now Tier 7. In terms of cost-effectiveness, they were indeed a better deal than before.

Calculated this way, simply upgrading the old Swarm would take some time.

In truth, unlike traditional instant evolution through gaining experience, the genes liberated by the Hive often meant that individual insects required a higher energy supply and their internal structures underwent massive changes. Thus, the assistance of the Hive was necessary.

Currently, the modification speed for insects below Tier 6 (including Tier 6) averaged one second per creature.

However, for those above Tier 6, the average was closer to ten seconds each.

This meant it would take three days for the entire Swarm to complete its evolution.

The evolution process would occupy the production capacity.

But it didn't matter. For the next few days, Xia Jin considered only producing the newest types of insects.

“Produce 200 ravagers, 20 nydus worms, and 50 ultralisks per day.”

Just that alone would cost 1.08 million units of standard energy a day.

Additionally, she would produce some scourges to help seize air superiority and maintain high-intensity attacks on the enemy.

The upgraded insects would be prioritized for deployment to the battlefield, rapidly replacing the low-tier insects on the front lines.

Having made this decision, Xia Jin began her wait.

...

An hour later...

The City Guard, who had been struggling to resist the Zerg bombardment for several hours, noticed that a portion of the enemy had suddenly retreated.

Through their monoculars, they saw that roughly one-tenth of the Swarm seemed to have received an order and left their field of vision.

“Could there be reinforcements coming from that direction?”

The city defense officer frowned.

The enemy was clearly determined to take this city; otherwise, they wouldn't have deployed self-destructing creatures on such a massive scale.

And this tactic put immense pressure on the defenders.

These creatures were actually willing to seek death just to drain the power of the magical barrier.

Over the next few hours, the signs of the Swarm's retreat became even more obvious.

A total of half the insects had left the scene.

This naturally included the banelings that had been continuously bombarding the city.

In the sky, the intensity of the attacks from scourges and mutalisks weakened, to the point where the griffins, who had been hesitating to act, took to the air again to engage the enemy and achieved some results.

The enemy no longer seemed to force the offensive, but simply held their side of air superiority.

Of course, the deployment of banelings had not stopped, so for the mages maintaining the magical barrier, the defensive pressure was still very high.

Just as the Kingdom's high command was wondering if the Empire had sent some kind of reinforcements, the first batch of 20,000 upgraded insects finally returned to the scene.

With their arrival, even more of the old insects retreated.

This upgraded Swarm pushed to the very front of the battlefield.

Following a volley from the catapults, the terrifying power of the Tier 7 banelings taught the people of the Kingdom a very harsh lesson.