The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3835

Chapter 3835 The Four Kingdoms

Ves became fascinated by the internal situation in Purgatory.

The phase whale enclave had fallen into ruin, but the native life forms that originally resided in it had thrived during their long-term isolation.

Cut off from the rest of the galaxy, these out-of-control test subjects or former slaves or whatever turned the largely self-contained field of large asteroids into their own little world.

Few overt traces of the phase whale race remained. Aside from the ruins on the Lab Continent, the other landmasses contained no obvious artificial traces.

None of the asteroids appeared to be normal, though. Ves and many other science-minded individuals wondered how this pocket space maintained equilibrium.

There was no point in thinking too much. There was no way that the science teams at his disposal could figure out how Purgatory worked and how it interacted with energy and matter.

These were profound questions that could only be solved by greater forces such as the MTA that was definitely paying a lot of attention to Purgatory.

What Ves and the others should focus on instead was attaining more modest goals such as plundering the Lake Continent of all of its phasewater!

If not for the fact that there were lots of powerful phasewater-augmented fish-whales on that landmass, the expeditionary forces would have departed already!

As Calabast commanded everyone's attention during the virtual conference meeting, she projected a map of Purgatory.

Compared to the previous version of the map, this one not only showed the asteroids in greater detail, but also featured overlays that cleverly conveyed additional information.

Important elements such as phasewater deposits, energy sources, fish-whale concentrations and their estimated combat power could all be viewed in the glimpse of an eye.

Anyone who looked at the map would notice that there were four distinct asteroids that were occupied by four groups of distinct fish-whale groups.

"Before we discuss our strategy, let us take stock of the 'natives' occupying this newly-discovered pocket space." Calabast said as she gestured towards the map. "Thanks to the observation data brought by Venerable Tusa, we know that there are 23 major asteroids floating in a spherical space. These asteroids are all of substantial size. The smallest one can fit a city while the largest one can easily be regarded as a true continent. Each of them is occupied by different fish-whales though not all of them are treated as important. As far as we can tell, the landmasses of value are all divided among four fish-whale 'kingdoms' that all possess the strength to defend their own territories."

Nine continents began to glow in red.

"Let us begin with the most familiar group of fish-whales to us. The color-coded fish-whales that we have encountered and killed en masse are much more numerous than we feared. They also happen to occupy almost half of the landmasses in Purgatory, granting the so-called Swarmers an abundant amount of room and resources to breed a lot of fish-whales. While we can only make inferences based on limited sensor readings, we estimate that the Swarm Kingdom contains as much as 12 million fish-whales, a significant proportion of which are located on the Central Continent!"

Everyone looked shocked.

"Twelve million!"

"There's no way we can defeat that many fish-whales by ourselves. Our mechs will wear out and our energy reserves will run dry before we have killed a tenth of this amount!"

Calabast remained unfazed despite describing an alien group that possessed as much combat power as a small state.

"Based on what we have observed and what we can infer, the Swarm Kingdom is overwhelmingly made up of non-sentient drones that act more as elements of a superorganism than self-contained life forms. The most common white fish-whales essentially cannot think for themselves and need to be led around in order to accomplish greater goals. While the existence of an intelligent queen has not been definitively proven, based on various behavior patterns such as sending out an attack horde on a suicide run against a rival kingdom, we are 90 percent certain that there is at least one guiding intelligence among the Swarmers."

The Swarm Kingdom was the most dominant group in Purgatory. The other kingdoms could not come close to matching the numbers of this huge fish-whale group!

"This kingdom is not without flaws, however." Calabast smiled. "The vast majority of fish-whales are in an inactive state when they are not being guided. We believe the guiding intelligence is limited by how extensively it can reach, communicate and issue orders to other Swarmers. Otherwise, the activation of the ancient alien gate and the appearance of a human fighting force on one of its continents should have attracted an immediate response from these opponents. Despite setting foot on Purgatory a day ago, the neighboring hordes of fish-whales have not shown any sign of exploring our beachhead or launching an all-out attack to repel the foreign invaders from their realm. A human state would never be so complacent."

The Swarmers easily had the numbers to push the human invaders back to the other side of the portal, but they continued to act stupid. Either the guiding intelligence was playing the long con or there were severe deficiencies in the operation of its kingdom!

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