“The Orc Empire, the primitive tribes, the Mis Kingdom... that’s enough fallback options.”
Xia Jin had left a Zerg Hive in each of these regions.
This was to ensure she had a chance to make a comeback even if she failed.
There was no other way; most of her high-level hives were located on the West Continent, uncomfortably sandwiched between the Dawn Empire and the Border Forest.
Her urgency in expansion and her desire to quickly conquer weaker areas were fundamentally for this purpose.
Of course, Xia Jin actually had more than just those fallback options; she had two others.
One was the hive located to the west of Clearwillow Lake, which had slowly crawled to the lakeside by now, preparing to enter the water.
The other was on the edge of the West Continent.
Over the past ten days, Xia Jin had deployed over 1.5 million Swimmers into the depths of the ocean.
This sheer number was overwhelming for the Sea Race below.
With 200,000 entering the water every day, she wondered what the sharkmen were thinking right now.
In fact, the Zerg had already taken control of the entire western coastline of the Clear region.
At least twenty kilometers of the coastal area was now her territory, and over a million aquatic creatures were launching attacks in all directions, regardless of the cost.
Hundreds of thousands of locusts were assisting in the transport and recycling of corpses, bringing them to the creep on the shore for absorption.
The main offensive line had already pushed out five hundred kilometers.
Total Swimmer losses were approximately 300,000.
Naturally, the enemy’s casualties were far higher.
This meant that the coast of the Great West Sea was now secure.
It was for this reason that Xia Jin dared to submerge a hive into the water.
The heavily invested underwater front had basically stabilized, and as for the navy, the kingdom's shipyards had begun steady production over the past few days.
In other words, Xia Jin believed the Swarm’s maritime preparations were essentially complete.
“Time to surge the army.”
She began to expand the number of land-based insects.
Although the overall cost had increased due to the rise in tiers, the speed of creep placement was becoming faster and faster, meaning the temporary dip in production would soon be recovered.
She discovered that her daily resource production had reached a staggering 100,000 square kilometers, equivalent to producing 24 million units of standard energy a day.
Combined with the energy recycled from corpses and other sources during the war, her daily energy harvest had surged to 36 million in just these few days.
“In that case, I might as well prioritize producing zerglings.”
Using 20 million units to produce Tier 7 zerglings would yield roughly... 40,000 units a day.
“Well, the Empire is definitely doomed. Time to get to work.”
Within the borders of the former Mis Kingdom, about 60,000 of the current 90,000 unupgraded insects immediately split off and headed south, launching a direct assault on the small nation of Huiwei.
Although it engaged in oceanic trade with the Dawn Empire, it was ultimately just a colony. Its military strength was inferior to the Kingdom of Clear, and its land area and population were much smaller. Xia Jin didn't hold back; she intended to steamroll everything.
After a single night, Huiwei completely fell.
Without a word, the Swarm immediately turned to attack Lümingte.
One country per day—even if they were small nations, they still spanned hundreds or even nearly a thousand kilometers.
This speed of advancement forced these nations to send out emergency communications.
The Dawn Empire and the Yelu Empire received the intelligence one after another.
The reactions of the two nations were likely completely different.
Dawn... who knows. They were holding a meeting in a sealed chamber, so God only knew what they were thinking.
Yelu, on the other hand, was filled with pure shock and conflicting emotions.
“This faction we are cooperating with... have we underestimated their strength?”
The high-ranking officials of that nation began to worry about this terrifying power appearing to their south.
However, the Empire was indeed too strong. The scourges sold to them were quickly integrated into the Yelu fleet and engaged the Dawn Empire in the East Sea. Although the scourges certainly dealt heavy blows to the Empire, the enemy deployed swarms of aircraft and griffin knights, managing to maintain the advantage.
“They’ve already mastered carrier tactics right from the start?”
Xia Jin received the news and felt a bit of a headache.
But this was to be expected; the Empire’s air force had always been powerful. It wasn't like Earth, where naval aircraft were unreliable when carriers first started developing, leading many to believe that battleships were superior to carriers.
Magic civilizations possessed a massive advantage in air power, and their aircraft were highly stable, essentially allowing them to skip directly into the modern era of naval warfare.
Of course, gunships existed as well, though their tonnage remained unknown.
Reasonably speaking, if they could build carriers, building battleships wouldn't be a problem either.
Regardless, the Zerg technically didn't have massive ships on the scale of battleships or carriers; they were all roughly ten-thousand-ton vessels packed with a multitude of aerial creatures.
The smaller boats focused on anti-aircraft defense.
As for gunships, they had none for the time being.
In any case, Xia Jin deployed her army, advancing all the way toward the southern part of the Mis Kingdom, showing every intention of swallowing all the nations in the south.
Having had no communication with the Empire, she waited for two days... and then the Empire's fleet arrived.
Countless aerial machines flew directly over the coastline and began a bombardment of the insects on the ground.
Shell after shell was dropped, and the massive impact was more than even Tier 6 zerglings could withstand, killing them in swaths with every blast.
Hydralisks immediately launched bone spines at the sky.
Evidently, the first wave of spines caught the enemy off guard, resulting in the immediate loss of over ten aircraft.
However, the enemy quickly began using their flying machines to perform precision strikes on the hydralisks.
It was clear that many magic planes were only capable of low-altitude dives. Overall, casualties were heavy on both sides.
Rate on N.U.
