A Numbers Game

Unfortunately for the sharkmen, while they were calculating the cost of their cannon fodder, the Swarm was thinking the same thing.

Without anyone noticing, six hundred swarm hosts had already arrived at the edge of the beach.

In just one hour, they could produce twelve thousand locusts.

With long-range fire support, these locusts charged forward in wave after wave.

Meanwhile, shrimp soldiers and crab soldiers were coming ashore in batches, even pushing the battle line three kilometers forward and landing across a twelve-kilometer stretch of beach.

On the surface, it seemed the insects were at a numerical disadvantage.

Even the zerglings and other units hiding in the rear did not step forward; only the hydralisks and a few ravagers occasionally bombarded weak areas with plasma fire.

Yet, the number of insects remained inexhaustible.

...

“The enemy has advanced four kilometers inland from the shore.”

Seeing one thousand massive swarm hosts now concentrated on the nearby ground, Xia Jin rested her chin on her hand, feeling a secret urge to laugh.

After three hours, the advance of these shrimp soldiers and crab generals had finally slowed down.

She could see that these marine creatures truly intended to conquer the land; after coming ashore, they had even constructed aquatic dwellings—shell-like houses formed by spitting out a strange substance.

A total of approximately sixty thousand shrimp and crab soldiers had landed, with more emerging from the water periodically.

They maintained a high-intensity engagement with the massive number of locusts, holding the advantage in both numbers and strength.

However, with the arrival of a fourth wave of twenty thousand locusts, along with more locusts produced over the past few days that had not yet been committed to battle, the numerical advantage shifted to Xia Jin’s side.

Now, the entire Swarm’s locust population—a total of one hundred and twenty thousand—had arrived on the scene.

The reason the number wasn't higher was mainly because the consumption in battles on other fronts had been too intense.

At this moment, every swarm host the Zerg possessed was in the vicinity; it could be said that their entire production was being used to target the Sea Race.

This gave Xia Jin the feeling of playing an old base-building strategy game.

The two sides remained locked in a stalemate.

One hour passed...

Two hours passed...

After half a day, all one hundred and twenty thousand newly born locusts had been deployed. The territory the Sea Race had fought so hard to take was now being compressed by frantic attacks from all directions.

It was clear that even undersea creatures feared death.

In fact, creatures that do not fear death generally find it very difficult to evolve.

Even the honey badgers of Earth use their wits to avoid death; they may look brave, but they possess a deep wisdom for survival.

But the Sea Race found that their enemies were completely suicidal.

The insects didn't care about their own lives or the lives of their companions; they were simply cold machines of war.

Squirts of venom almost corroded away a layer of the beach.

The twelve-kilometer coastal front they had struggled to establish was compressed to less than three kilometers. Those shrimpmen and crabmen who had ventured four kilometers inland were cut off by a sudden, frantic charge from the insects and completely devoured.

Of the sixty thousand Sea Race cannon fodder that had landed, only twenty thousand remained, while the locusts had suffered over seventy thousand cumulative losses.

However, as another hour passed, new insects born from the swarm hosts in every direction reinforced the front lines once again.

Refusing to accept defeat, the sharkmen sent out another one hundred thousand shrimp and crab soldiers in a single breath.

This massive wave of attack actually surprised Xia Jin.

The ten-kilometer coastline was suddenly swarming with dense clusters of the Sea Race.

The sight of it made her marvel; these aquatic creatures certainly had quite a temper.

“I only sent some Swimmers to poke them a bit, and now they're retaliating like they've gone mad. At this rate, it’s not impossible that the land creatures really did suffer back in the day.”

She sent a few thousand zerglings up to provide support. After they killed over ten thousand enemies in a single charge, the locusts went back to wearing the enemy down.

The battle lasted into the night, and Xia Jin moved up another two hundred newly hatched swarm hosts as reinforcements.

With a total of one thousand two hundred swarm hosts, they were producing twenty-four thousand locusts per hour.

Under wave after wave of nearly inexhaustible strikes, even the chieftains of the shrimpmen and crabmen began to suspect something was wrong.

Even if they were cannon fodder, they couldn't just keep sending them to their deaths like this.

But as a species with an incredible reproductive rate, losing a mere hundred thousand or so didn't really matter.

“The land creatures must die.”

...

Xia Jin calculated that the insects on the front line were more than enough, so she stopped paying close attention.

Currently, a portion of the Swarm had been mobilized into the Border Forest, splitting into multiple clusters to clash head-on with the magic beast kings.

The main force remained idle within the Kingdom's territory.

Although there were no major wars in the short term, the Swarm wasn't truly idle.

At the same time the war against the Sea Race began on the West Coast, three massive hulls were pushed into the water.

Because of the war, most ships had been destroyed. Those that weren't destroyed had left the Kingdom with various refugees.

These three were ships that had been nearing completion but had not yet been launched.

At Xia Jin’s request after the war ended, they were dismantled, transported across Clearwillow Lake to the ports of the city states on the east coast, reassembled, and pushed into the water.

At this time, the Second Princess of the magic monsters arrived on the scene with a squad of elf bugs.

Two elf bug girls walked to the side of the hull to inspect it.

The ships were mostly wooden, with sturdy steel plates added to the exterior as a shell.

Several wind element magic crystals were embedded into grooves on the upper deck. Combined with magic arrays, they could reduce the hull's weight and increase sailing speed.

Undoubtedly, these three ships integrated the Kingdom's most advanced technology.