I Am The Swarm

As the first civilization from the Swarm’s region to join the Interstellar Technological Confederation, the Riken Race enjoyed a period of booming business. Their flagship product was various grades of longevity serums.

Although they later lost their position as the primary producer due to issues with the yield of longevity plants, their trade city remained the largest market for longevity serums, thanks to the Ji Race laboratories established within their territory.

While longevity serums were precious, their production materials were relatively easy to obtain, and the Confederation had mastered the full production process. With large-scale cultivation, the price of longevity serums had steadily declined.

It could be said that individuals from civilizations within the mid-ring and above could easily obtain a bottle of longevity serum with a little effort. As the cultivation of longevity plants continued to expand, even outer-ring civilizations would eventually have access to them.

Thus, longevity serums had become a very accessible product, beloved by the masses.

As the Swarm’s good neighbor, the Riken Race, after joining the Confederation, enjoyed a brief honeymoon period with the Swarm under Elder Humes’ leadership. The Swarm also opened a trade city, and although the selection of goods was limited, each item was highly sought after.

In particular, the personal edition of biological armor was in such high demand that it was nearly impossible to obtain. Bringing one back to the heart of the Confederation often fetched a high price, making it highly prized by the elite and even sparking a trend.

Both of these products were tools the Swarm used to infiltrate the Confederation. To this day, no one had discovered their secrets. If not for the outbreak of war, Luo Wen might have been able to take over the entire Confederation without shedding a drop of blood within a few millennia.

Unfortunately, the war led to the loss of the longevity plant production areas in Riken territory. Even the expanded production areas in the Koya Alliance and the Locke Mutual Aid Society later fell into the Swarm’s hands.

If possible, Luo Wen would have loved to package up those longevity plants along with the land they grew on and ship them to the Confederation, even helping them expand production capacity.

But this was just a dream. Actually doing it would undoubtedly backfire.

However, in the nearly hundred years leading up to the war, the two races had already sold a vast quantity of goods. The Swarm had gained many “allies” as a result, but these allies only made up a tiny fraction of the total number of qualified individuals.

There were two reasons for this. First, Luo Wen didn’t want to recklessly increase the number of Intelligent Entities. After all, once converted into Intelligent Entities, they would no longer be bound by lifespan limitations and could live indefinitely unless something unexpected happened or Luo Wen intervened.

Therefore, Luo Wen was very strict in his selection of Intelligent Entities. Only exceptional researchers had a chance of being converted. The second group consisted of high-ranking officers in the Confederation, who could provide the Swarm with valuable intelligence, giving them an edge in the war.

Although longevity serums weren’t expensive to produce, their limited supply made them a relatively scarce resource. Compared to researchers, individuals with some level of authority were more likely to obtain them.

However, Luo Wen didn’t want to convert too many of these individuals, as their intelligence often overlapped significantly. Once converted, if they lost their current positions, they would lose most of their value. Without command or research capabilities, they would only pollute the ranks of the Intelligent Entities.

While Luo Wen could erase their consciousness after using them, turning them into pure spiritual entities to be absorbed, he was psychologically reluctant to do so.

Alternatively, Luo Wen could have simply absorbed their spiritual entities from the start without converting them into Intelligent Entities. This would have been less burdensome psychologically, but it would have caused a large number of deaths within the Confederation.

This would have led to panic, hindering the promotion of longevity serums. Luo Wen couldn’t afford to make such a foolish mistake.

The second reason was the limitations of the Swarm Network, or rather, Luo Wen’s own limitations.

Luo Wen’s connection to this universe existed on a dimensional level, transcending space. It couldn’t be defined by conventional distances.

Therefore, for Luo Wen to locate a specific region or unit within this universe, he needed internal cooperation and support.

Currently, the Swarm’s units could be divided into two types of markers. The first was a very special type of anchor unit, evolved from Luo Wen’s original body in this universe. Thanks to this unique connection, these units, regardless of size or volume, stood out in the universe like flares in the night sky, allowing Luo Wen to easily locate them from outside the universe.

After Luo Wen mastered the Fold Crossing skill, anchor units took on the role of expanding the Swarm’s territory, establishing sub-hives throughout the universe.

The second type of marker was the node unit. Whether they were Worker Drones, Brood Queens, Fungal Carpets, or Space Octopuses, whether they were as small as nanoscale seeds or as large as Primordial bodies, Desolation-Class Motherships, or even Megastructures, they were all node units.

Perhaps because node units were secondary productions, their positioning capabilities weren’t as strong as those of anchor units. If an individual node unit left the coverage of the Swarm Network, Luo Wen couldn’t locate it.

In simple terms, they would go offline. However, this didn’t mean they would go rogue. These units would continue to carry out their last orders or remain dormant until Luo Wen found them again and reintegrated them into the Swarm Network.

In the early days of the Swarm’s infiltration into the Confederation, many node units went offline. For example, the personal edition biological armor sold to various locations was often taken far away, leaving most of them in an offline state.

Similarly, longevity serums sold to distant regions and Intelligent Entities dispatched to remote areas were prone to going offline.

However, node units weren’t completely devoid of positioning capabilities. When their numbers in a specific region reached a certain threshold, they could achieve an effect similar to anchor units. They would relight their positions in the Swarm Network, helping Luo Wen locate them.

In the early days, when Luo Wen’s power was still weak, this threshold was quite high. Node units within a one-light-year radius needed to number in the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, to mark their location.

This made it difficult for the already scarce node units in the outside world to reach the required numbers. Even areas that had been marked could easily be lost again in the dimensional turbulence. For example, the Swarm and Riken researchers who had been exchanged for points were assigned to different locations or separated during transport, causing Luo Wen to lose track of most of the Intelligent Entities he had once been able to locate.