I Am The Swarm-Chapter 812: Targeted

The side hangars of the Ji Race warships opened, releasing large numbers of unmanned fighter drones. These drones came in two varieties: one larger in size, which moved to the front of the fleet, spread their wings, and formed a crystalline barrier defense system; the other smaller, featuring a sharp triangular-wing design that made them look extremely aggressive.

These smaller, triangular-wing drones assembled into neat formations—each group consisting of ten units—and then split into smaller squads, heading directly for the Swarm’s rear Star Gates.

They were incredibly fast and highly maneuverable. Their special design minimized their cross-section, making them harder to hit. Although this also made them extremely fragile, they were still difficult targets for enemy fire.

These triangular-wing drones swarmed like bees or fluttered like brilliant butterflies, weaving and dancing through the battlefield under intense fire. Though a few unlucky ones got shot down, most of them managed to close in on the Swarm’s defensive line without much harm.

Against conventional mechanical civilizations, these drones would be an excellent tactic. But against the Swarm, they fell just a bit short. In the early days, the Swarm had virtually no long-range firepower and had to do everything possible to get their units into enemy formations and win in close quarters.

Now, charging straight into the Swarm was nearly unheard of.

Several idle Primordial bodies opened their flesh pods, and small larval bodies flew out to intercept the Ji’s triangular-wing drones.

With the two sides’ light units closing in, an intense dogfight was about to break out. But just as both sides entered weapon range, the Ji drone formations surprisingly didn’t fire first.

“Looks like the Ji Race is really out of resources,” one of the Intelligent Entities in charge of the larval bodies murmured.

It turned out that most of these triangular-wing drones were unarmed. Even the Swarm’s larval bodies now commonly carried a small energy cannon—albeit weak, slow-firing, and mostly decorative or used to breach ship interiors. Still, in certain scenarios, they could prove useful.

Like now.

The two swarms clashed in a high-speed chase, with larval bodies trailing the triangular-wing drones, taking potshots. This was likely the first time the larval units had ever been on the chasing side—they were usually the ones being hunted down.

Luo Wen’s strength had grown rapidly, but even he hadn’t foreseen this situation. As such, the larval bodies’ energy cannons were still single-shot, low rate-of-fire, and weak in damage. Their main function remained breaching enemy hulls from within.

Though the triangular-wing drones were lightly armored, that was relative to secondary guns. Their alloy bodies were still tough enough to withstand a few blasts from the larval body cannons.

Still, “withstand” didn’t mean “ignore.” Dodging was still necessary—it just gave them a higher tolerance for error.

The larval bodies had actually wanted to practice some close-combat techniques against the drones, but the drones’ biggest advantage was speed. If they managed to slip past during interception, the larval bodies had a hard time keeping up—so all they could do was chase and go biu biu biu out of frustration.

Fortunately, the Swarm’s defensive formation was deep. Even though a few interception waves were evaded, plenty of defensive units were waiting behind.

To counter these speedy drones, the Swarm adjusted their tactics slightly. From behind the defensive line, more flesh pods opened, and space-adapted versions of Modified Spider Combat Bugs crawled out.

These large spiders existed in land, sea, air, underground, and space variants—they were among the Swarm’s most versatile and widely deployed combat units.

Their effectiveness came with good reason. The space versions had appeared in past battles, and over the centuries had undergone countless upgrades. While their combat roles hadn’t changed much, their base attributes and equipment had seen massive improvements.

Once they emerged from the larval bodies’ flesh pods, they clambered up onto the larval bodies. Their clawed limbs, with hooked tips, allowed them to anchor securely to desired positions even in the vacuum of space.

The larval bodies were widely dispersed. Since the triangular-wing drones lacked ranged attacks, the Swarm didn’t need to form tight formations to avoid fire—they could spread out more liberally.

The Spider Combat Bugs on their backs were now fully primed, locking onto their respective targets. When the drones flew straight at them, the spiders waited until they were in range and then arched their abdomens—firing out translucent silk threads.

Their upgraded silk glands gave the threads tremendous pressure and launch speed. But the drones weren’t defenseless—despite the silk’s near invisibility, their high-performance image capture systems picked up on the threat. Their agile maneuvering systems allowed them to narrowly dodge the threads.

But the drones had made one miscalculation: these threads had been magnetized inside the spiders’ bodies. Once launched, they could curve midair, magnetically homing in on the drones.

Almost simultaneously, the Spider Combat Bugs on the larval bodies began sliding along the silk, pulled rapidly toward the drones. If the drones had ranged weapons, they might have had a sliver of hope—perhaps one percent—to fend them off. But they were unarmed and had no such chance.

With magnetic attraction and clawed limbs, the Spider Combat Bugs could move across the drones’ smooth hulls as if walking on flat ground—even at high velocity. These weren’t unfamiliar units to the Swarm; their intelligence network had long since obtained schematics and specs for these drones.

That meant the spiders didn’t need to experiment or guess. In just a few steps, they reached a structural weak point, where their two specially reinforced high-molecular front limbs stabbed directly in.

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The triangular-wing drones’ already inadequate alloy bodies barely resisted for a moment before caving. The blades plunged in to the hilt. At the same time, a ghostly blue arc sparked from the Spider Combat Bug’s body—surging with violent electricity that coursed down through its limbs into the drone’s frame.

The drones’ lightly protected internal systems were overwhelmed by the surge. Their thrusters sputtered twice—then died.

Now that the Swarm had deployed a targeted counter-unit, even though the triangular-wing drones resisted fiercely—pushing their engines to the limit and pulling off all sorts of aerial acrobatics—their numbers were still dwindling rapidly.