Increased Armored Heavy Cannon Bugs

The Swarm had used this method more than once to move forces to the rear and launch surprise attacks.

In one battle, Xia Jin dispatched a nydus worm that appeared behind enemy lines and actually went unnoticed for a short time.

Subsequently, ten ultralisks, fifty roaches, over two hundred zerglings, and an indefinite number of other bugs, along with countless locusts, crawled out and launched a sneak attack that wiped out an enemy unit the size of a battalion. The remaining bugs quickly fled with a haul of corpses. Although many were killed by aerial bombs dropped by the arriving air force, they still managed to return with a significant amount of resources.

The characteristics of every bug were being utilized to their fullest.

Although the Swarm gained a significant advantage through such unconventional tactics on local battlefields, the overall battlefield could no longer be sustained.

Sometimes, to rescue a swarm surrounded by the enemy and avoid pointless annihilation, Xia Jin would even order the bugs to abandon territory they had already gained and retreat.

On the Empire's side, they could deeply feel the bugs' fearlessness in the face of death.

There was no possibility of any bug surrendering.

In this war, their only choice was to annihilate every single bug.

Locusts, which could only live for three days, would become particularly frenzied if they were still alive near the end of their lifespan. The primal brain bugs would take temporary control of them, making these bugs perform high-risk missions that offered high rewards upon success. In any case, the goal was to use them up.

There were also locusts that were truly about to die but couldn't be sent on missions in time. They would crawl onto the creep on their own to be absorbed and digested.

During this battle, the queens had been busy spreading creep tumors. The soldiers of the Dawn Empire considered the Zerg's creep to be full of pollution, calling it "meat paste sauce dragged out of hell," and felt it was filled with an aura of evil.

Consequently, during the fighting, the legions supporting the war in the front-line areas were constantly under fire from the enemy.

But as expected, the creep itself had a strong growth capability, and the queens were constantly rushing to various places to spread it.

Such an exaggerated rate of expansion was enough to prove troublesome for the Empire.

...

At that same moment, in an area 50 kilometers away from the front lines.

Xia Jin arrived on the scene. She wore simple sandals on her feet with white socks underneath.

This outfit was very ordinary for her, as was the princess dress she wore. However, to the subordinates of her own race and other creatures, it still held a strange allure.

She arrived at a newly constructed command area. After waiting for a while, a massive nydus worm suddenly poked its head out.

Its bloody maw gaped open, revealing an inner wall that looked like a biological intestinal tract.

Before long, several large bugs crawled out from inside.

Each bug carried a 120mm cannon on its back.

These were Armored Heavy Cannon Bugs.

Compared to their initial design, they no longer looked like turtles at all and were even more agile.

As for their armor, one could see their bodies covered in heavy chitinous shells. Moreover, the structure of the shells was smooth and complex, set at certain angles to resist enemy artillery fire.

After the bugs crawled out, they immediately dispersed and headed toward nearby Swarm units. They prepared to accompany a group of bugs to the very front of the battlefield with the help of another nydus worm.

“Deploying 120 of them at once this time should be enough.”

The enemy in this sector had penetrated the deepest. A powerful force composed of three legions had torn a gap in the Swarm's defense line, creating a large salient. Normally, the Swarm should have been able to concentrate powerful forces from both sides to swallow this protrusion.

But unfortunately, it was completely impossible to achieve.

Because the Dawn Empire's combat strength was no weaker than her own, a simple frontal assault actually failed to take it down.

But this was a good opportunity. The enemy also knew that the salient was a weak point.

Next, they would likely use more troops to launch attacks from other directions to smooth out the disadvantage here. They might even use the forces in this salient, along with legions penetrating other areas, to split and encircle all the nearby Swarm units.

To counter this, Xia Jin prepared to deploy the heavy cannon bugs she had mass-produced.

There were 120 heavy cannon bugs facing the right side of the enemy's salient alone. Naturally, there were no fewer on the front and left sides.

Expensive nydus worms would also be deployed on a large scale in this battle, specifically to move troops from the rear quickly.

New bugs produced in the hive only needed to pass through the bodies of three nydus worms to be rapidly deployed to the front lines.

All in all, the time spent on the road was less than an hour.

How could the Empire possibly compare to this kind of troop deployment capability?

Furthermore, Xia Jin had already thought of the possibility of using this method for guerrilla warfare.

Of course, her foundation (the hive) had to be well-protected, and air superiority had to be perfectly maintained. Otherwise, with the Empire's magic planes that numbered in the tens of thousands at every turn, there would be risks no matter where they tried to wage guerrilla war.