The Hive Princess had her eyes closed, yet at this moment it was as though she were there in person; she could see every corner of the battlefield before her clearly.
For through her own swarm will, the Hive Princess could, within a certain range, link into the wills of every hive life that had submitted to her.
She could see everything they saw.
And she could give them orders at once, too.
In other words, every hive life aboard this T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership was one in mind with the Hive Princess.
And at this moment hive combat units by the tens of thousands were scattering out of the body of the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership, surging forward without end.
Charge!
Destroy every enemy that stands in the way.
At any cost, get close to that T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship!
That was the one conviction in the mind of every hive combat unit at this moment.
It was also what the Hive Princess had sent out.
At this moment they had only this one thought.
While the Hive Princess directed the battlefield, she did not forget the "logistics department" inside the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership either.
The Hive Princess had not only strengthened those low-grade hive combat units; she had also put special effort into upgrading the hatching department.
It let the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership go on breeding new hive combat units at top speed even in wartime, and feed them into the war.
Some of the high-grade ones she perhaps could not breed in wartime.
But T3 and those below T3, and even T4-grade ones, could all be bred in the middle of a battle.
Hive Motherships had had breeding functions of this kind before this, true.
But their efficiency had really been poor.
It was only through the Hive Princess's research and breeding, day and night, that this T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership now had its super-breeding system.
All through this interstellar warship were breeding chambers, one after another.
In these breeding chambers were honeycomb-like frameworks, and in them the "seeds" prepared long in advance.
These seeds were what could be bred and evolved into those hive combat units.
And in combat, all it took was to reawaken these originally frozen seeds, and pump in food and energy, and the seeds would grow up fast.
Before, a T6 Taotie-class Hive Mothership could perhaps breed and produce only 100,000 T1 Flying-Bugs an hour.
But after the Hive Princess's upgrades and refitting, this T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership could breed 3 million T1 Flying-Bugs in a single hour,
and T1 Flying-Bugs refitted for greater fighting power at that.
There were even special breeding chambers that could breed T4-grade Leviathan combat units.
This function had been wholly absent from the T6 Taotie-class Hive Mothership before.
And breeding at such intensity naturally required this T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership to have energy reserves enough.
Otherwise they would soon run dry.
For this the Hive Princess had thought of many ways.
In the end she adopted a method of compressing energy.
Energy that had taken ten units of space to store now took only one.
That way the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership could store far more energy than before, and so make sure of its wartime energy supply in battle,
letting these breeding chambers turn out hive combat units without end!
And at this very moment, as the enemy's T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship drew nearer and nearer,
great gun after great gun on the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship could be seen turning to lock onto the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership.
Once within range of fire, this T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship would at once blanket the whole of the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership with its fire.
"According to the data gathered in the fighting before, that Troll Monarch opposite should have the radius of its main fire within this area," the Hive Princess murmured to herself, opening her eyes and looking at the holographic map of the interstellar holo-table before her.
On the holographic map of the interstellar holo-table was marked the position of the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship opposite, and around it ring after ring centered on it.
These rings were the radii of fire of this T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's different weapons, gathered before this.
And on it, too, was marked a certain time.
That countdown was in fact a time worked out from the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's speed and radius of fire: the time until it would come within the enemy's range of fire.
It showed five minutes left now.
"Everything that needed setting out has basically been set out. Now we just sit and wait for the prey to take the bait." The Hive Princess rubbed her chin with her fingers.
And in the five minutes that followed, the fighting went basically just as every onlooker expected.
Swarms by the tens of thousands came howling at the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship, and the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship, advancing as it went, kept shooting those hive combat units down with its own defensive weapons.
The Devourer Civilization interstellar warships around it were helping in the fighting too.
But they paid nearly 1,000 interstellar warships for it.
And the swarms that got close to the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship were few indeed; they could do only some damage to the star-shield force field, and never even touched the hull.
And in no time it would be the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's turn to strike back.
"Thirty seconds left," the Hive Princess murmured.
Then, at a thought of hers,
the belly of the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership opened, and hive combat units like jellyfish floated out one after another. These jellyfish did not attack.
They only floated around the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership, like little guardian sprites.
And, it must be said, they looked rather cute.
Very soon the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship came within firing range of its main weapons.
All the muzzles of the weapons along one side of the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's hull could be seen lighting up at this moment.
Then beam after beam came streaking toward the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership.
Along the way, hive combat units could be seen hit and falling one after another.
These hive combat units did serve, to a degree, to protect the Dragon-Bones Taotie.
But a good many shots still broke through these swarms and struck at that enormous Hive Mothership.
And as everyone knew, the peculiarity of a Hive Mothership was that it had no star shield; as a biological interstellar warship it relied on its own biological armor to resist the enemy's attacks.
So these shots would be expected to land straight on the Dragon-Bones Taotie's hull.
But the scene everyone imagined did not come.
For all those shots were "intercepted" before they reached the Dragon-Bones Taotie.
And those "interceptors" were the very "jellyfish" just released.
These jellyfish seemed to sense the shots; their pale blue bodies turned crimson in an instant, then swelled up whole and rammed into the shots.
As they collided with the shots, they burst into crimson powder, and the shots simply dissipated.
"What is that?" The Troll Monarch's heavy voice sounded.
"This…… this…… I don't know either. In all the records of the interstellar hive-race, there has never been a record of a hive combat unit like this," the subordinate officer said, sweat all over his forehead.
"Could this be a new species of the interstellar hive-race?" The Troll Monarch frowned.
No one dared speak.
"Ready our Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon. I don't believe these jellyfish can block every shot of my Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon," the Troll Monarch said in a deep voice.
"Yes!" The subordinate officer went at once to see to it.
"What are those jellyfish?" The secretary-officer behind Zhao Waner was astounded.
She had never seen this hive combat unit before.
"Never seen them." Zhao Waner looked curious too.
The secretary-officer analyzed it: "From what I can observe, this jellyfish unit should be a defensive creature; it can hover around the Hive Mothership, and then defend actively when it senses an attack. And it has a smart mode too: when an attack's strength goes past a certain range, several jellyfish intercept it together."
"Like a defensive interstellar missile," Zhao Waner gave her assessment.
She paused, then went on, "Before this I heard my brother say that the Hive Princess had spent some time lately finding ways to improve her own hive unit types, and to create stronger hive unit types. That T6 interstellar web-way king-worm from before was researched and bred in this phase. I expect this jellyfish is the same."
"Then this Lady Hive Princess is far too amazing. To research such powerful hive creatures by her own strength alone, in so short a time!" the secretary-officer praised.
Zhao Waner said nothing; she knew something more, too: that her brother in fact often gave the Hive Princess some help, and above all sent her a batch of mysterious materials every so often.
She expected the speed of the Hive Princess's research and breeding had a good deal to do with her brother.
"I wonder what other secrets Lady Hive Princess's Dragon-Bones Taotie has hidden inside," the secretary-officer said, somewhat expectantly.
And the answer was soon revealed,
and under the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's storming attack at that.
A terrifying idol appeared at the top of the Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship; in the idol were dense rows of black gun barrels, like eyes.
"So that's the rumored one of the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship's strongest weapons: the Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon," Zhao Waner murmured.
The secretary-officer beside her at once brought up a window recording everything about this "Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon."
"According to the files, this Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon is one of the strongest weapons fitted on the T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship, something like the fit of an interstellar heavy-artillery ship. It has ninety-nine heavy guns in all, which can fire without a break for sixty seconds, firing nearly 6,000 heavy rounds in all. In the combat records so far, no T6 interstellar warship, even in its prime, has withstood this wave of attack. It even once, in an invasion of another interstellar civilization's universe, destroyed the enemy commander's flagship outright while it was guarded by 3,000 enemy interstellar warships."
At this moment anyone at all who had read these records of this T6 Troll Monarch Interstellar Fortress Ship would have felt a tremor in their heart.
Its fighting power truly had reached quasi-T7 grade.
But Zhao Waner folded her arms now and added calmly, "This weapon is very strong, but after it's used it needs a long time to cool down. About thirty minutes. In a large campaign that's one thing, but in a duel of king against king like this one, the other side will never give you thirty minutes."
The secretary-officer nodded; the reasoning was sound.
But the question now was whether Lady Hive Princess's T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership could withstand this round of attack.
Plainly the jellyfish alone could never hold off this round of attack.
And the Dragon-Bones Taotie had no star shield; its biological armor really was much stronger than ordinary hull armor, but that also meant that if it came under attack, the effect inside the hull would be greater too.
Even as they spoke, the Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon had already opened fire; from those ninety-nine huge muzzles came black orbs of energy, one after another, streaking toward the target at tremendous speed.
They fired almost every second; the sight was like the fabled Pear-Blossom Storm of Needles.
Everything in the path of this fire was reduced to ash in the blink of an eye, swept wholly clean.
Only the huge target in the distance was left:
the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership!
And at this moment the bow of the T6 Dragon-Bones Taotie Super-Heavy Hive Mothership actually opened slowly, like a huge flower of darkness.
And the rounds of the Thousand-Eye Troll Cannon all fell into the great mouth of this giant flower.
The explosions everyone imagined did not come.
Instead the giant flower in bloom grew more and more dazzling; in the once pitch-black flower, streaks and spots of purple light began to appear.
As it took more and more fire, yellow lines appeared too, spreading over the giant flower like cracks.
"This…… what's this now?" The secretary-officer was dumbstruck.
She had never seen this on any T6 Taotie-class Hive Mothership!
Zhao Waner frowned, then said, "If I'm not mistaken, this must be another of the Hive Princess's upgrades to this Hive Mothership: at the bow she's put a…… device…… that can absorb the enemy's attacks. A different kind of defense. But so far it's very effective."
"I wonder if it can hold, though," the secretary-officer murmured anxiously, watching this astonishing scene.