It was a great relief to know that the Red Collective was working on a promising idea to defend planets against the voribug menace. Formation masters were about to become a very popular profession once it became known that they had the most promise when it came to building a sustainable defense against mutated voribug invasions. The RC was definitely not the only group to develop a solution. Others were probably doing this as well, if only to ensure that their territories and holdings would not collapse if the voribugs managed to overrun the Rubarthan Pact. The Dark Apostle still believed that relying on a defensive qi formation was ultimately the most sustainable solution. It would be extremely advantageous for the weak and mortal humans to build a shield that largely remained active by absorbing E energy radiation that was everywhere. While he could think of a few ways to undermine this defensive measure, it would still take a lot of effort from the mutated voribugs to defeat it entirely. He hoped that the formation masters could produce a result sooner rather than later. The news from the frontlines of the Rubarthan Pact kept sounding worse over time. Just thinking about it made the Dark Apostle feel uneasy. Despite his chosen moniker, he did not actually want to spread desolation at an apocalyptic scale. He just wanted to carve a place in the dwarf galaxy for himself and the Ascended Giants. Whether he would have to maintain a dependency relationship with the humans did not matter so much to him anymore when the mutated voribugs would gladly devour both of their races if given the chance! In a way, the mutated voribugs were the perfect enemies to promote cooperation between humans and Ascended Giants. The insects earned no sympathy. No human possessed any emotional baggage that could prompt them to prioritize the lives of these disgusting space vermin. Letting the Ascended Giants fight side by side with humans to combat this collective threat would do wonders for interspecies cooperation. The Dark Apostle was very much aware that there was no other way out for his 'people'. This was also one of the reasons why he was enthusiastic to fight against the latest enemy menace. There was no better way to melt the hostility and tension between the two groups than to forge bonds of trust on the battlefield. To be able to do that without messing up, the Dark Apostle needed to be careful about where to deploy and which hive he should fight against first. "Tell us about the third hive." Eliza Mo Ragadan complied with his order. "The third hive that is assailing the contested border regions of the Rubarthan Pact is the Solari Hive. As its name suggests, the Solari Hive has a strong relationship with the energies produced by the stars in the skies. Whereas the Superswarmers desire to conquer star systems by starting from the coldest reaches in the periphery, the Solarii prefer to settle the satellites that are the closest to a star. This will expose their voribugs to a great amount of thermal energy, which they can readily use to accelerate their growth and procreation." The projection showed how such a conquest unfolded. "Only a small amount of Solarii are needed to infiltrate a globe in the inner system. They could either drift on a small and insignificant asteroid that just happened to be flung at the planet, or they could hitchhike on a starship that hasn't been properly cleansed of a bug infection. Whatever the case, so long as a Solari voribug has landed on a hot planet, it can immediately begin to procreate and expand its numbers on a rapid scale. The hotter the planet, the faster the reproduction rate. The resources of planets that are closer to stars often tend to be fairly decent, so the average quality of a Solari voribug is also higher on average. This is usually enough to rapidly overwhelm whatever defenses humans have built on the planet if they have bothered to do so. In sparser star systems, that is not the case as it is difficult to justify the expenses." The expansions always happened quickly. Hot planets or asteroids were ideal breeding grounds for Solari voribugs because they provided an abundance of energy and matter. That was all the insects needed to explode in numbers in the shortest possible time. The Rubarthans were not prepared against the Solarii. They had previously dispatched many patrols to the outer system to detect and hinder Superswarm-style invasions as much as possible. This just happened to leave their armed forces in a very poor position to respond to rapidly escalating crises that kicked off in the inner system! It only took a few mistakes for an entire hot planet to become engulfed with voribugs in a matter of days! Once all of these bugs began to spread out and infect other nearby satellites, it became incredibly difficult to defend against the onslaught. The expansion rate was too high and the defenders usually weren't prepared to fend off such a high-speed onslaught. Read on lig‌ht‌no‌‌vel‌world‌.o‌rg It was easy to deduce that the Solarii preferred to start their invasion in the inner system because they wanted to take settlements by surprise. So long as they could complete the first steps of their invasion cycle quickly enough, the Solari voribugs could rapidly assault a human-occupied star system within a week, which was not enough time to transfer a lot of reinforcements! In fact, shortly after the Solari Hive emerged, it was already on the verge of conquering half a dozen star systems where this sequence had occurred! The Solari must be preparing to capture dozens more star systems utilizing the same strategy. The Rubarthans came under even greater pressure. Not only did they have to remain on guard against the Superswarmers, they also had to watch over their hot planets for fear of letting the Solarii take root. This was maddening! "These Solari voribugs are black. That is odd." "Yes." Eliza confirmed. "The Solarii are the only mutated voribugs that have adopted a functional color. Early autopsies have confirmed that they are adapted to absorb as much heat energy as possible and convert that into useful energy that can promote their growth or strengthen their attacks. Compared to other voribugs, they are exceptionally good at resisting energy attacks. However, the same biological adaptations make them much more vulnerable to kinetic attacks. They have proven to be considerably less resistant towards old-fashioned bullets and kinetic rounds." "I imagine that the Solarii do not care about that. They can reproduce so quickly that they can mobilize more voribugs than the defenders have bullets." His leader of staff nodded. "That is unfortunately the case. It is harder to resupply units that use up physical ammunition as opposed to energy cells. High-quality weapons designed to penetrate azure energy shields and transphasic armor are overkill when used against the voribugs. Most kinetic weapons such as gauss rifles have a slower firing rate because penetration power matters more than attack rate. These weapons may play a good role when employed against Goliaths, but they are the wrong weapons to use against the Solarii voribugs, which are not as weak as Superswarm voribugs but are not particularly strong either." Early indications showed that the Solari Hive preferred to settle for a middle ground in terms of quality. It mostly took advantage of the heavy metals and other decent materials available at planets that typically orbited closer to stars. The better the materials, the hardier the voribugs. "Is there anything else that makes the Solarii special?" "Yes. This is still a preliminary development, but we have detected that the proportion of black voribugs that can launch energy attacks has increased in the last few days. If this is not a fluke but a serious trend, then that indicates that the Solari Hive will rely much more heavily on voribugs that can attack enemies at range as opposed to the simpler strategy of swarming their enemies up close. At worst, the Solarii may become siege experts by relying on their energetic bugs to launch massed energy attacks at defensive locations." This was a concerning development. Most of the voribugs so far preferred to get close and chew their enemies to death. This was a primitive and predictable approach that was easier to counter. If the mutated voribugs started to diversify their attack methods and figured out ways to launch laser beams or even plasma bolts, they could open up a lot of new attack strategies that would make them harder to defend against! Perhaps a single ranged voribug did not pose too much of a threat, but what about a million? What about a billion? With enough ranged voribugs, the Solari Hive might even be able to repel a greater phase lord! The Dark Apostle frowned as he took in the traits of all of these hives. "So this is what the Rubarthans have to contend against." "Yes, sir. The native aliens are not exposed against these hives. They are being assaulted by other hives that possess their own traits and colors. This is further proof that the leaders of the mutated voribug species are sapient and intelligent. It is not yet clear why the Devourer Queen has appointed different hives to different adversaries, but for the time being we should only concern ourselves with the Goliath Hive, the Superswarm Hive and the Solari Hive." The diversification of the mutated voribugs presented additional problems to the Dark Apostle. He initially thought that he could come in and work together with his weaker human self to develop a good game plan against the space vermin. However, now that different hives emerged that all chose to diverge from each other, a solution that worked on one set of mutated voribugs might not necessarily work against the other sets! How devious. This development meant that countering the mutated voribug race had become much more of a team effort than before. The Dark Apostle could not become the sole savior of red humanity anymore. At most, he could help the Rubarthans mitigate their losses by figuring out a way to fend off one of the three hives that actively assaulted human-occupied space. "We should start with focusing on how to hinder the invasion of a single hive. There will be others who will focus on defeating the other hives." The Farseer suggested. "Which hive do you prefer to confront first? My personal preference is the Superswarm Hive for the reason that I have previously mentioned. This hive's lack of Goliaths or other strong units makes it easier to repel them with the help of a planetary-scale qi formation." "That may be true, but we have a total of 31 Ascended Giants in our fleet." The Divine Harpoon spoke up. "We did not come to this front to exterminate an endless amount of pests. These Goliaths are the only enemies that are worth confronting. While they are crude, they should still give our boys a good enough exercise. Defeating them will quickly reduce the pressure of the star systems under siege by the Goliath Hive." It was not that difficult for the Dark Apostle to make up his mind. "I am the head of the Phase Lord Department." The new polemarchos declared. "I am not the head of the Qi Formation Department or whatever. It is not my priority to cater to your needs, Farseer. Instead, it is the other way around. You should cater to my needs. As far as I am concerned, the Divine Harpoon is right. We need worthy enemies to fight against, and the Goliath Hive just so happens to present us with big enough strains to present a decent challenge. The Bluejay Fleet must divert its course to the Rubarthan star system that is most under siege by the Goliaths. The sooner we arrive, the sooner the Ascended Giants can make a name for themselves." It should not take long before the Ascended Giants and the Goliaths warred against each other!