Xyrin Empire
Chapter 412 - Chapter 412 Chapter 412 Tavilles Research Achievements

Chapter 412: Chapter 412 Taville’s Research Achievements Chapter 412: Chapter 412 Taville’s Research Achievements What does it feel like to be surrounded by a hundred million insects?

Disgusting, absolutely disgusting, various kinds of extreme disgust!

Just as I had said before, being surrounded by all sorts of worms, reptiles, sticky bugs, arthropods… ugh… every time you turn on any holographic projection, all you can see is insects and their flesh and guts flying everywhere. I really can’t imagine how Pandora and Visca can charge into outer space every day with such high spirits and even come back and eat an extra half bowl of rice…

Under Qianqian’s time acceleration effect, all of our defense turrets finally entered normal operation. The entire Black Egg Star was armed to the teeth, with tens of thousands of orbital defense cannons and even more ground-based anti-aircraft guns. The predicted swarm of a hundred million insects arrived on schedule, and the sight of the seemingly endless insect sea gave one goosebumps, even just from looking at the holographic projections. Although they suffered heavy casualties under the care of the near-orbit laser guns while they were still a day’s journey away–being mowed down by sweeping laser beams–these losses were less than one-tenth of the hundred million-strong tide. The dead insects were even conveniently pushed forward to serve as sacrificial armor. I bet creating one of these insects costs even less than the plate Sandora eats every morning–why on earth did such a bizarre comparison suddenly come to my mind?

After sustaining not too great a loss, the various insect races numbering more than a hundred million finally reached the synchronous orbit of Black Egg Star. There, they encountered a truly powerful blockade and couldn’t advance any further. Led by Sicaro, the Defense Army formed a strong Ghost Energy Shield, enveloping the entire planet. The intense energy floating on the shield not only sturdily withstood the impact of the insects but also incinerated them to ashes during the collision process. After hundreds of thousands of hand-to-hand combat type reptiles were lost, the commanders of the insect race also realized that this mysterious shield was more dangerous than any defensive mechanism they had ever seen. They promptly gave up on the attempt to break the planet shield with suicide charges and retreated the reptiles (or maybe I should call them “little dogs”?) behind their positions, revealing the densely packed and ugly tens of millions of so-called flying dragons.

But when I actually saw these things called “flying dragons,” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing: How dare they bear the name of dragons?

They were nothing but dried locusts with the heads of toads and a couple of bat wings attached to their backs, damn it! These things were several times more disgusting than the aliens designed by the designers at Blizzard! Not only were they covered in dark brown lumps of flesh and spiny shells everywhere, but their faces were so ugly you’d wish to pixelate your own eyes. And what’s even more disgusting–these bastards actually spit at our beautiful sky-blue shield!

Since when did the flying dragons in StarCraft become spitters that just spit water? That’s not in line with the original setting, right? I mean, shouldn’t these guys be spewing out a bunch of little insects… ugh, that seems even more disgusting…

Okay, I’ve decided, let’s tentatively name this operation “For the Clear and Beautiful Blue Sky”.

No more complaints for now, as we still have to face being surrounded by a hundred million insects. The flying dragons–although I’m hesitant to use this term–really lived up to their mighty reputation from the StarCraft storyline. The corrosive acid they spit, according to our measurements, has kinetic energy comparable to conventional solid artillery and acidity enough to corrode titanium alloy armor. For a carbon-based life form to deliver such striking power compels one to marvel at the exaggerated DNA mutation ability of the insect race. However, against the Xyrin units equipped with ghost energy shields, these saliva-dragons are definitely in for a tragic end. Their prized corrosive attacks are completely ineffective against ghost energy, and they think they can penetrate the planet shield with just the kinetics of their spit… I’m confident I can make these spit-dragons cough up blood from their stomachs!

On our side, when laser guns lose their greatest advantage of range, the ghost energy storm obelisks have their day in the sun. These towering spires, worthy of the nickname “King of AOE” (in Bubbles’ words), which need to charge for five minutes before each activation, when set upon the orbital platforms beneath the shields, engulfed by blue-purple electric halos, would generate ghost energy storm spheres spanning dozens of kilometers in radius right in the center of the insect group army. These rampant spherical lightning storms could easily turn thousands upon thousands of insects into charred matter. Of course, I’m talking about the regular insect units. Some that I hadn’t seen before, likely high-order evolved versions of the flying dragons, seemed to possess the ability to control special energies. Even enveloped in a ghost energy storm, they often managed to escape the lightning zone, albeit crippled, which forced me to reassess the insect race’s strength. Without a degree of planetary defense systems set up in advance, we might indeed suffer significant losses facing the impact of a hundred million insect swarms head-on…

Moreover, in the process of strangling these insects, I also witnessed how efficient and cruel a true war race could be: due to the presence of celestial-level ghost energy shields, the close-combat basic insect units, which I call “little dogs,” seemed to be abandoned. Once the insect commanders realized that it was impossible to breach these shields quickly, these expendable fodder insects were mercilessly ripped into pieces by their own kind and then thrown into all sorts of strange things made of fused insect tissue and cosmic material (like meteorites or fragments of destroyed spaceships) behind the battlefield, perhaps their portable incubation pools and various nests. The shredded “little dogs” and the remains of the dead insects were tossed into these wriggling, disgusting organs, and kept continuously turning into the most useful troops of the moment: flying dragons, and… well, I have no idea what that is…

I also noticed a very concerning phenomenon: many of the insect units responsible for the frontal assault were quickly manufactured at the rear of the battlefield. Samples of these insects, including some “regeneration flying dragons,” were brought back by assault ships. Upon dissection, we found they lacked digestive organs and feeding tools; their lifespan lasted only a few days, similar to the insect we initially discovered in the sniper star cannon. This means a significant reduction in production costs and a drastic increase in production speed. The newly discovered insect swarm tactics are giving us a headache–where the hell does this place family planning, damn it!

“If we don’t destroy those incubation pools, I’m afraid this battle will drag on for a very long time.”

When it became clear that the rate at which the Insect Race’s numbers were diminishing was far slower than the rate at which we were destroying them, Sandora released a large number of invisibility detectors towards the battlefield, now completely overrun by the insects, and finally discovered these breeding sites, which were heavily guarded by layers of insects. It was clear that these disgusting space Insect Nests allowed the Insect Race to maintain an extremely vigorous breeding capability throughout the war. Their once-born offspring may have short lifespans, but their combat strength was not a bit less than that of a human’s main battle tanks.

“But to attack these breeding sites, we must break through a super defensive line formed by at least forty million insects, many of which are high-level insects with special abilities. Our super space-time strike cannot lock onto such close targets, and if we attack directly, our forces are insufficient. Until we reduce the number of insects to a certain extent, we have no way to deal with those incubation pools deep in the enemy’s rear.”

Such a situation really depressed me. Couldn’t these Insect Race members have come a few days later? At the very least, they should let us comfortably develop for a while! Now that we just finished establishing our base, we have neither the troops nor the ships, and the powerful warships are all grounded, busy with infrastructure construction. Suddenly, we have to face this overwhelming enemy… Isn’t this a complete screw-over? Do I really have to painfully dismantle the newly on-track General City and take the Imperial Admiral to fight off cockroaches?

Forget it, no use thinking about all that now.

The current battlefield situation is extremely complicated. Although the Insect Race has the terrifying numerical advantage of one hundred million, for one thing, Xyrin Technology has an absolute quality advantage, and on the other hand, the enemy lacks enough top-tier units. We weren’t at a disadvantage, but the enemy’s bizarre way of warfare was truly disgusting– in fact, due to the Insect Race’s relentless kamikaze attacks, several Imperial warships near the planet shields’ weak points had already been buried in a sea of insects.

Overall, however, we still stood unbeaten with the power of the mighty Xyrin Fleet.

Pandora and Visca were now leading their own main armies, tasked with the heavy responsibility of eradicating the Insect Race’s living forces. Clearly, the two madwomen took to such a task with glee, taking advantage of their elite troops’ rule-breaking combat strength to charge through the encircling Flying Dragon Group, tearing huge wounds in the dense Insect formations. However, even Pandora had difficulty extending her slaughtering range to a thousand kilometers outside the planet shield– the Insect swarm there was too dense.

“I never imagined that there would be such a thoroughly warfaring species in the world,” even Sandora lamented with a headache, “Tearing up low-value kin and using them as nourishment to produce soldiers more suited for the battlefield, even collecting the scattered flesh and blood on the battlefield to use as materials for the next batch of soldiers… Even we Xyrin Apostles have not become as warlike as this.”

I reserved my opinion on Sandora’s words– aren’t the Xyrin Apostles a warlike species enough?

“Hey! Ah Jun, don’t give me that skeptical look! We do have things like art, you know!”

Seeing the expression on my face, which I utterly failed to hide, Sandora, who a second ago was calmly commanding the interception forces to attack the enemy, immediately pouted in grievance. In front of me, this iron-blooded Queen even seemed more like a little girl than Qianqian.

“Art of the Xyrin People?” I was left speechless and looked away. Are you referring to those Imperial soldiers who, having nothing better to do, laser-engraved the entire Imperial Code on bullet heads?

As expected, the battle with the Insect Race turned into a war of attrition. We tried to deploy EOP-03 outside the atmosphere to eliminate the enemy. The first deployment achieved sizable results. Although the vacuum environment was not suitable for chain reactions, this powerful Ghost Energy Bomb still managed to use the Insect Race’s own density to eliminate more than ten million of their living forces. However, the insects became wise to it by the second deployment. The moment they sensed that terrifying power, they chose to escape far away. Perhaps they did not have the intelligence to discover the principle of EOP-03, but as a result, they fortuitously encountered the lethal flaw of the Ghost Energy Bomb; without sufficient material contact, EOP-03 could not produce a chain explosion reaction, and so the mere explosion of a single Ghost Energy Crystal became meaningless against one hundred million insects.

Aside from this out-of-specifications area-of-effect weapon, all kinds of ground anti-air firepower and warship main cannons, despite their powerful attacks, were unsatisfactory against the Insect Race’s enormous numbers and their bizarre replenishment of troops.

Is this really a case of quantity overwhelming quality?

“With this way of fighting, even though wiping out the enemy isn’t a problem, the consumption is too high.”

Sivis, looking at today’s battle report, had a face full of frustration.

“Don’t we have more effective weapons of mass destruction?”

I frowned. Given that the Xyrin Apostles’ war technology was so advanced, why was it so troublesome to deal with these low-level creatures?

“The most effective weapon, of course, is the EOP-03, but its weakness had been accidentally discovered by the insects, and the Ghost Energy Storm Obelisk isn’t strong enough in the face of a hundred million enemies. The adaptability and evolutionary ability of these insects are astonishing. The few immature biochemical weapons and conventional radiation weapons we’ve tried were only effective a few times before all the insects evolved antibodies — we don’t know how they manage to share DNA information among their kind, but if we can’t solve the rapid evolution of the Insect Race, which leads to a sharp reduction in the effectiveness of our weapons, it’s probably going to be a war of attrition to exterminate these vast numbers of creatures.”

Qianqian, bored out of her mind, was counting her hair while leaning on the table when she suddenly lifted her head, “Speaking of which, don’t you guys have some kind of ultimate laser that can sweep across the entire Sky Zone? An Ultraman Beam or Dynamic Light Wave will do, right?”

Facing the girl’s purely disruptive remarks, I decisively gave her a karate chop.

At this moment, Visca, who had just come down from the synchronous orbit, bounced into the command center. At the sight of me, she ran over excitedly, jumping in an attempt to share her achievements: “Brother, brother, brother! Ten million, oh! Ten million, oh! Today, my troops exterminated a whole ten million of the Insect Race!”

Although I didn’t want to dampen my precious sister’s spirit, don’t you know? Nearly seven million of the ten million insects you destroyed will turn into vigorous enemies again the next day!

As we were troubled by the numbers of the insects and their tenacity, the automatic door of the command center slid open gently, and then Taville walked in.

Strictly speaking, it was Taville’s mass clone that walked in; “her” edges were trembling with unstable spectra, and her body was nearly translucent, clearly indicating that it was not her actual body here.

“Taville, do you have any new research findings?”

I nodded respectfully to this dedicated female scientist. Her ability to use mass clones to concurrently conduct research in several areas across multiple laboratories and achieve remarkably fruitful results impressed me. If only some of those pain-in-the-butt commanders could be half as diligent as her, I would have to thank my god Dingdang.

“I have some good news for you, Your Highness,” Taville’s voice sounded somewhat distorted by interference, “Our soul analysis on Silvia has finally made a breakthrough. An Imperial Emperor’s profile from our shared database, after being simulated with Abyss radiation, showed changes over 80% similar to Silvia’s soul. We believe that this previous Imperial Emperor is Silvia’s true identity–hypothetically speaking.”

Could you not end every statement with that unsettling ‘hypothetically speaking’?

This indeed was good news that could help to alleviate our gloom at such a time, and it successfully diverted my attention, “Silvia’s true identity is indeed a former Imperial Emperor? Which one?”

Although I asked, I assumed that even if Taville named them, I wouldn’t recognize the individual. The Xyrin People’s Emperor Council had as many as 135 members, and they were quite distant from one another, rarely interacting except occasional exchanges over the entire Empire’s communication network. Even Shandora couldn’t remember half of her colleagues…

Taville pulled out an information screen and read slowly, word by word, “The Horror Shaper Bellavilla, who rose from a mere officer and succeeded as the Xyrin Leader after the former emperor fell in battle. An apostle of the Mysterious System, belonging to the ‘Raven’ branch race. She is also the Empire’s most powerful Raven, whose combat capabilities once earned praise from a Main God of some star domain. The title of Horror Shaper, originally a title among the High Order Dark Divine Race, stems from her use of unprecedentedly powerful Arcane, Flames, and Shadow Power in combat. She once destroyed an entire planet with a storm of Lightning in just ten minutes. The ‘Energy Vacuum’ that Silvia occasionally erupts with could be the mischief of a Raven’s soul talent at work. She doesn’t eliminate that energy, but rather transfers it into Arcane Power and drains it away–although she has forgotten how to control it, and the energy eventually disperses into the Void.”

An apostle of the Mysterious System? Is this really just a coincidence? The Leader of the Mysterious System, Alaya, is already an idiot, and now another apostle from the same system turns out to be a simpleton? Should one cherish their intellect and stay away from magic then?

“Horror Shaper?” Shandora murmured thoughtfully, “I seem to have heard of that name. She was a rather low-key emperor; her domains were far from mine, so I don’t know much about her–Taville, you must have other results, right? Merely discovering Silvia’s true identity wouldn’t satisfy your research interests.”

Shandora was indeed right, and Taville immediately showed a pleased expression, then spoke proudly, “I hope both Your Highnesses will like my gift, as they are already standing in front of the Teleportation Gate at the Space-Time Management Center. This small unit may have an unexpectedly significant effect in the coming battles.”

Minutes later, that unit Taville mentioned had completed the teleportation, assembling on the plaza in front of the Crystal Tower.

“In fact, we discovered the secret deep within Silvia’s soul several days ago, which is why I prepared this surprise,” Taville’s cloned self stood in front of the hundred-plus new Xyrin Units, his face glowing with pride, “The former Imperial Emperor Bellavilla was a quite special entity. She progressed from a regular Heroic Combat Soldier, which made our research possible. By reverse calculating Silvia’s soul, we deciphered the key technologies of Ravens, and then cloned these Mysterious System Apostles, the mass-produced Ravens, who could be considered masters in group combat.”

As Taville said this, he stepped aside to let me inspect these Great Mages hailing from the Xyrin Empire.

Being clones of Silvia’s soul, all these Ravens were female and had strikingly similar looks to the Dullard King, complete with long silver hair. A hundred slow-reacting faces lined up neatly before me, each bearing the resolute and courageous expression of fresh Xyrin recruits straight off the production line. No matter though, given time and especially after mixing with those sly veterans and certain commanders, these glory-filled new recruits would inevitably become one of a kind–Visca’s Scorpion Soldiers had even started learning how to play mahjong…

Cough cough… I definitely went off on a tangent.

They did not wear the standard silver alloy Light Armor or metal boots commonly issued to Imperial Soldiers, but instead were clad in long black cinched War Robes and matching long boots, akin to a kind of overcoat. After observing for a while, it suddenly struck me that from behind, these Ravens looked like a group of female versions of Safiro…

(So, let the rolling continue as I beg for all kinds of support…)(To be continued, if you want to know what happens next, please visit www.NovelFire.net. More chapters are available and support the author by reading the licensed version!)

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