The warriors had already prepared themselves to resist to the end.
Or rather, they actually had only that one choice.
Among the fusion weapons dropped by the Zerg, there were still excessive fission units—atomic bombs—specifically intended to contaminate the environment of the war zone.
The effect of the contaminated zone was now manifest; the enemy's main forces could not rapidly enter the Swarm's controlled areas and could only resort to long-range fire.
This left the million-strong army still remaining on the capital's battlefield isolated and without aid.
Led by the charge of several ultralisks, the subsequent sea of insects began to swallow position after position.
Resistance was fierce in some areas, making progress difficult. Coupled with the ground forces being heavily equipped with neutron bombs, the Zerg's losses were actually quite significant.
However, a wave of fireballs descending from the sky every half hour made the Dulu feel nothing but despair.
One had to realize that it wasn't just one drop pod, but tens of thousands.
Batch after batch.
Worse still, the swarm hosts and brood lords, which had already burrowed dozens of kilometers underground to begin gestation, started producing an endless stream of the Swarm.
This made civilian resistance within the cities even more difficult. Meanwhile, nearby units lacking biochemical protection were forced back into the contaminated zones, even though they knew they couldn't retreat.
...
Twenty-four hours later, the scale of the Zerg's main landing force: 71 million units.
This number differed slightly from the initial preparations, being short by a million, but it was still within the controlled range.
The number of Zerg deployed daily would fluctuate afterward, but overall remained within control.
Although the battlefield performance was good, the current scale of the Swarm was not yet large.
In fact, even as the main forces were dropped in wave after wave, it was still a small number for a planet with a population of tens of billions.
To prevent nuclear bombs from blasting organic matter into a state that was difficult to recover, this wave of the Swarm's invasion focused primarily on pure offensive slaughter.
Continuously deploying troops, continuously consuming production.
Unlike the wars during the era of the Dawn Empire, the current breeding speed of the Swarm was absolutely explosive.
Among the various cities, the offensive on the capital was the slowest.
Initially, the battlefield was concentrated on twenty cities, but by now, sixteen cities had been completely controlled by the Swarm.
In the most extreme areas, the insects controlled at least 30,000 square kilometers.
By the second day, due to production capacity limits on the satellites, the Zerg's deployment speed was reduced to one-third of the normal rate.
However, Xia Jin shifted her strategy slightly, dumping several waves of resources into queens, increasing their numbers by 100,000. She then used these queens specifically to spawn larvae, which were quickly transformed into zerglings.
Although this resulted in a six-hour vacuum in the middle, it soon increased production capacity to a deployment rate of three million main units per hour.
Furthermore, the vast majority of these main units were fodder like zerglings.
Xia Jin herself was very fond of zerglings; as a Tier 10 unit, they could remain in a survival state indefinitely, unlike locusts and broodlings which died automatically, and they were cheap.
Units like swarm hosts and brood lords now functioned more like tools. They were used to bolster the number of insects or to quickly hatch a batch of troops to fill the ranks or stabilize the front line when offensive pressure was insufficient.
Of course, during a main offensive, broodlings and locusts, being consumables, could be deployed regardless of the cost, which was very reassuring.
By the third day of the war, the total scale of the main Swarm reached 150 million.
On this day, the intensity of the Swarm's offensive on all fronts surged, advancing at a speed of sixty kilometers per hour. The ships in space also continued orbital bombardment, deploying a cumulative total of ten thousand 300,000-ton yield nuclear bombs.
The entire world was shrouded in the clouds of nuclear explosions.
By the fourth day, the Swarm had seized two million square kilometers of land and killed three billion Dulu (with another five billion or so dying from nuclear bombardment).
This death rate was far faster than a viral infection.
The entire home planet had completely entered a state of maximum emergency and implemented a total war mobilization order.
Xia Jin noted that the current Zerg landing forces were still not numerous enough.
“It seems necessary to build truly large transport ships after a while.”
Ships measured in kilometers were something she had wanted for a long time, but the construction costs were too exorbitant.
After all, the ships themselves required fusion engines and spatial navigation technology; one couldn't just build a shell and leave it there. It was also unwise to lower defensive performance to save costs, as losing even one in a future space war would be quite a loss.
“Let's design them first; construction can wait.”
The order was sent to Brain Bug No. 1.
It was a workhorse now, anyway. Xia Jin handed off everything to it.
...
Over these past few days, with twenty thousand mutalisks deployed daily, the Swarm had basically seized control of the skies by this point.
Part of the credit went to the fusion bombardments.
As the war continued to the tenth day, the area controlled by the Swarm had reached fifty percent of the planet.
The Dulu seemed to realize there was no possibility of communication with these aliens and had gone completely mad.
Various high-yield nuclear bombs were used without restriction.
But the insects, dispersed over such a vast area, were not afraid of hydrogen bombs at all.
Even an explosion with a yield of a hundred million tons would not kill more than a few hundred thousand units in the core area.
The more they dropped, the worse the environment became, which was actually detrimental to the Dulu.
Compared to the Dulu, the Zerg side truly acted without regard for consequences. Xia Jin dropped an average of ten thousand 300,000-ton yield nuclear bombs every day, treating it like a KPI; even if she didn't know what to hit, she would drop them regardless.
Dirty bombs were used with equal fearlessness.
The environment of the entire planet became comparable to hell.
Until the eleventh day of the war, when the main Zerg forces attacked the enemy's last city.
At this moment, countless resistance fighters stood nervously in their defense sectors, occasionally looking up at the sky.
They were waiting, wanting to see when the Zerg's orbital weapons would be dropped on their heads.
But the hydrogen bombs did not come in the end.
Descending slowly and finally hovering several kilometers in the air was a Small Leviathan.
Xia Jin's projection stood on a platform extending from the front of the Leviathan.
The young woman appeared in her true form.
Looking down, countless Dulu noticed her.
No Dulu would fire nuclear missiles toward this direction because it was meaningless; the Swarm had too many scourges, which could intercept them with ease.
Even if they were fired, the overseers in space would quickly detect their positions.
At this time, some Dulu officials who had relocated here had already seen the strange-looking alien.
Perhaps due to Xia Jin's high charm, even from the Dulu perspective, this alien creature's appearance was of the type that fit their aesthetic standards.
At least she looked better than the insects.
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