I Am The Swarm

In the process of growing up and through the trials of time, Luo Wen had come to understand one truth: the fastest way to solve a problem is to eliminate the person causing it.

Now, Luo Wen had mastered this principle as skillfully as he could transform intelligent entities.

After Conradus became “one of them,” the difficulty of this war game dropped from hard mode to normal mode. The lack of surprise, astonishment, or shock on the faces of the Confederation commanders made Luo Wen feel somewhat bored.

Since that was the case, Luo Wen decided to end this war quickly.

“Sir, the energy level of the Swarm’s megastructure has suddenly spiked!” a crew member in the command room suddenly shouted. Just moments ago, the instruments he was responsible for had started blaring alarms, the red warning lights nearly blinding him. This indicated the presence of an energy source in the vicinity that posed a significant threat to the flagship.

“What’s going on?” Conradus, however, didn’t seem nervous. This wasn’t because he had become “one of them.” Even though he had been transformed into an intelligent entity, he still had to operate within the Confederation, so he couldn’t act too out of character.

Moreover, the Rashudia race had requested assistance from the Ji race’s artificial intelligence for this expedition. This AI might casually collect some data, and if any anomalies were detected, it wouldn’t be good.

Therefore, to play his role convincingly, Conradus didn’t go easy on the Swarm during battles. Every decision he made was one he would have made under normal circumstances.

The flagship’s alarm wasn’t wrong, but its perspective was a bit narrow. It didn’t take into account the surrounding environment. That energy source was indeed a threat to the flagship alone, but harming the flagship amidst a fleet of several billion ships was a different matter.

So, under normal circumstances, Conradus’s reaction should be exactly like this. Moreover, as the supreme commander of the Confederation forces, even if he was panicking inside, he had to maintain a calm exterior to avoid unsettling the troops.

In fact, it wasn’t just Conradus. All the “insiders” within the Swarm, who were part of the Interstellar Technological Confederation, were diligently playing their roles as they were supposed to.

Most of the time, these “insiders” would wholeheartedly stand on the side of the Interstellar Technological Confederation, offering strategies to deal with the Swarm. Only in special moments, within a reasonable framework, would they push for things that seemed beneficial to the Confederation.

For example, Mowei and Elder Humes had first sent Mowei to leverage the Rashudia race’s background to delay the start of the war by advocating for a decisive victory against the Swarm.

After the frontline forces were dealt a blow by the Swarm, combined with the Rashudia race’s unique attributes, everything seemed natural and wouldn’t raise suspicions.

Finally, Elder Humes, as a Ji race elder, would go along with the plan, which was entirely reasonable.

Of course, this was only their secondary role. Most of the time, the Swarm didn’t need them to do anything special. Their greatest value lay in collecting all the intelligence they could based on their positions and sharing it with the Swarm.

This intelligence, in many cases, was more helpful to the Swarm than any direct actions they could take. Knowing the enemy and oneself was the greatest value these “insiders” provided.

At this moment, Conradus was diligently playing his role. Hearing his question, the crew member quickly repeated the earlier report: “Sir, the energy level of the Swarm’s megastructure has suddenly spiked.”

Conradus nodded. Although he was “one of them,” to ensure he could play his role more naturally and effectively, these “insiders” could only share intelligence with the Swarm unilaterally most of the time, without receiving information from the Swarm in return.

Therefore, at this moment, Conradus truly had no idea what the Swarm was planning.

“Is there any matching information?” Conradus asked.

The crew member operating the instruments had already shared the relevant data parameters of the Swarm’s megastructure with another crew member beside him. After a series of operations, the other crew member reported, “Sir, there’s no matching data in the database.”

“What’s the closest match in the database?”

“Sir, the closest match is electromagnetic catapulting, with a similarity of only 62%,” the crew member quickly reported. However, in his opinion, a 62% match was far too low.

Moreover, the Swarm’s megastructure’s electromagnetic catapulting was a function used long ago when the Swarm couldn’t achieve warp travel and even sub-light engines were relatively primitive. It was used to accelerate the flight speed of combat units.

Given the level of technology the Swarm had demonstrated, this function should have been obsolete by now.

What the crew member thought of, Conradus naturally considered as well. However, without access to the Swarm’s intelligence, he had no idea what the Swarm was planning. Therefore, after some thought, he could only order, “Send a message to the other forces and remind them to be cautious!”

Although the members of the Confederation forces didn’t have the same level of technology as the Rashudia race, even the lowest-tier outer-ring civilizations, when taken individually, were powerful civilizations capable of interstellar colonization. It was just that in the Interstellar Technological Confederation, filled with so many advanced races, they didn’t stand out much.

As an interstellar civilization, monitoring various energy sources was one of the most basic capabilities. Therefore, not long after the Rashudia race’s instruments sounded the alarm, the Confederation forces also detected the anomaly in the Swarm’s megastructure.

However, while they noticed it themselves, as the supreme commander of the Confederation forces, Conradus had the duty and necessity to remind his temporary subordinates to be cautious.

As for the Rashudia race’s own fleet of a hundred million ships on the front lines, all living beings had already been evacuated, and the fleet was entirely managed by the artificial intelligence provided by the Ji race. With the AI’s reaction speed, it had likely noticed the anomaly even before the instruments sounded the alarm.

Moreover, the Ji race’s AI currently had extremely high authority, so Conradus didn’t need to worry too much about his own fleet.

Due to its massive size and proximity to the star, the Swarm’s megastructure had main cannons with larger calibers and higher output power, giving it a longer range than even the Primordial-class main cannons.

Therefore, the Swarm’s megastructure was positioned at the very rear of the Swarm’s battle lines. Even if the Confederation forces detected the anomaly, it would be impossible for them to stop the Swarm’s megastructure’s actions.

Moreover, without specific intelligence on the Swarm’s megastructure, it was impossible to accurately assess the level of threat the energy spike posed to the Confederation forces. Therefore, even if they could stop it, there was no consensus on how much force should be allocated to do so. For now, the Confederation forces could only wait and see.