Continuous Clashes

“My Queen, the enemy's Eastern Route forces have reached the northern part of the Kelu region. They are less than 500 kilometers from entering the city states region. Should we divert some bugs to the Eastern Route to intercept them?”

Before Xia Jin could even worry about the state of the front, Ellie had already approached her, speaking with urgent impatience.

“It is fine, there is no need to worry. Given the terrain of the city states, it won't matter if we let the Dawn Empire's people in. I will just have my bugs use the local geography to bog them down.”

Xia Jin appeared very calm.

This was something she had considered long ago.

The Swarm's presence in the city states region was the smallest, yet the enemy's numbers had not decreased significantly there.

She planned to supply about 100,000 of the bugs produced later to the city states region to contend with the enemy.

Then, she would hold back for a few days to gather a larger army while replenishing the losses on the front lines, eventually launching a counter-offensive back into the Gexilu United Kingdom.

“Ellie,” she suddenly asked.

“What is it, My Queen?”

As a female knight, Ellie was now back by Xia Jin's side.

Of course, there was no longer any talk of knights; everyone was Zerg, and their past identities had lost all meaning.

“The incubation speed of the creep has been getting faster and faster lately. As expected, we need to produce more queens every day.”

The area covered by the Zerg's creep was now staggering; it was estimated that it would soon exceed a million square kilometers.

Such a vast area meant that when the Dawn Empire's planes flew overhead, they would see massive, terrifying patches of black.

To avoid being noticed by the mythic magic beast kings, Xia Jin spent a certain amount of standard energy to disguise large patches of creep as grass.

In fact, this grassy appearance was more pleasing to her own eyes as well.

Sometimes, even the Dawn Empire's magic planes found it difficult to tell if the grass on the ground was real or not. In terms of appearance, it was almost perfect camouflage.

At that moment, a queen arrived in a mountainous area and dropped a creep tumor forward.

The area covered by this thing was only about one square kilometer.

However, creep actually grew slowly on its own.

In its natural state, while absorbing energy from underground, it would also slowly expand toward its surroundings.

Not long after the queen left, the creep had completely covered the area.

Large patches of trees in the forest were temporarily preserved, mainly because plants provided little energy, and severe terrain damage might attract the attention of passing magic beast kings later.

After all, that black sub-dragon lady had burned a patch of her creep last time.

In the following period, Xia Jin slightly reduced the production of other bugs and increased the number of swarm hosts.

There was no other way; the pressure on the front line was too great, and the main Swarm units were insufficient. She could only use cheap cannon fodder to stall for time.

Regardless, the Empire was quite overwhelmed.

Never mind one-meter-long locusts; even if they were replaced by millions of rabbits charging in a mess, killing them all would be exhausting.

Furthermore, locusts were by no means harmless. During combat, their toxins severely contaminated the skin and could weaken a person's fighting strength to a certain extent.

A swarm of several hundred locusts charging together could even cause a Tier 6 powerhouse to die of exhaustion.

Xia Jin currently intended to increase the number of swarm hosts to 6,000.

The daily production of locusts would reach 2.88 million.

It could be said that the locusts would become an inexhaustible and completely suicidal enemy.

The Dawn Empire definitely could not afford to ignore these creatures, as the locusts would dismantle buildings, attack ordinary people, and search for every enemy they could find 24 hours a day, day and night.

In the final moments before their three-day lifespan expired, they would become even more frenzied, even using their corpses to block rivers or biting through the dams of dangerous rivers and spraying toxins into the water sources.

In some local battlefields, locusts alone had already captured places that the Dawn Empire's soldiers were completely unable to defend.

...

By this time, the main army of the Dawn Empire began moving north.

After annihilating the Western Route forces, the Zerg headed directly to the vicinity of Clearwillow Lake to engage in a head-on battle with the arriving Imperial main force.

The density of the artillery exchange between the two sides was extremely high.

Although the Swarm had moved most of the rocket bugs and heavy cannon bugs to Novien to deal with the enemies on the West Line, this did not mean there was no artillery on the Central Line battlefield.

In fact, to counter the powerful offensive of the Dawn Empire's main force, Xia Jin had also concentrated over 3,000 unicycles in the nearby area.

Of course, this number was a bit too low.

After all, the rockets launched from unicycles were not considered high-power weapons; they were something that could be carried by a single individual.

The truck mounted rocket artillery was the Swarm's heavy fire suppression equipment, but the production cost of these was high. Given the current situation where firepower was generally insufficient across the battlefield, mass-producing them was truly inferior to unicycles. In particular, the industrial department in the rear had calculated that the production cost of one rocket launch truck could produce at least 15 unicycles, and the time required was several times longer than for those 15 unicycles.