Chapter 1265 - 354: Second Assault

After nearly a week of breeding, the Insect Nest once again possessed power.

Even here in this Logistics Star Realm belonging to the Mechanical Race, it was the same.

You could even say that in this logistics region, the breeding speed of the Insect Race far surpassed the ones under Black Mist Prosthetic coverage, and the number of insects bred here was far greater than that of the Black Mist Insect Race.

Although the Mechanical Race had long anticipated another outbreak of insect plagues near the Logistics Star Realm, and had prepared alarm systems on any Planet that might have had contact with the Insect Race,

when almost every Planet in every Star System across this region began sounding alarms at the same time, the alarms basically lost any real meaning.

On each Planet, thousands to tens of thousands of Insect Race Cruisers rose into the sky.

It didn’t look like much.

But just think back—this was less than a week of output from the Insect Nest in terms of Insect Race Cruiser numbers, not ordinary insects.

And when the scale of Insect Nests expanded from a single Planet to hundreds of Insect Hive Planets,

then the final gathered count of the Insect Race Fleet would be a whole tier higher than the last raid Chen Ming set up.

This wasn’t a matter of "a bit more or a bit less" anymore, it was a question of whether, after the numbers were added up, the Insect Race Fleet could directly go head‑to‑head against an entire Star Realm of the Mechanical Race, Main Ships included.

Of course, Chen Ming wasn’t going to do that.

When he doesn’t have absolute certainty, he still prefers to keep something in reserve—this time was no exception.

He did not completely convert every Planet’s Insect Nest into Insect Race Cruisers.

The Insect Nests were still breeding on the Planets; as long as they weren’t destroyed, they could continue to provide him with an endless stream of Insect Race Fleets later on.

Meanwhile, millions of Insect Race Cruiser Fleets had already appeared across a vast area, constantly threatening the rear of the Mechanical Race.

The Mechanical Race reacted extremely fast.

The colonies inside all nearby Star Systems belonging to the Mechanical Race that were responsible for resource extraction, alloy smelting, component Manufacturing, and so on, terminated production at high speed at the very moment the alarms went off.

Relying on long‑prepared transfer methods, including various transport corridors and transport ships, they evacuated the vast majority of already‑produced resources from the Planets.

At the same time, these Mechanical Race units directly deployed large numbers of self‑destruct devices in the colonies, then demolished the original colony buildings and factories, leaving Chen Ming not a single intact piece of equipment.

They chose to completely abandon the Planets that had been occupied by the Insect Race.

And to prevent Chen Ming from effortlessly taking over intact colonies without any pressure, they opted for self‑destruction.

This time, however, unlike the last, the Destruction Carrier did not come over to conveniently send the entire Planet to heaven.

Probably because the Mechanical Race understood that once the Insect Race had already developed across multiple Planets, destroying a few Planets no longer had much meaning.

Destroy one Planet, and the Insect Race still has hundreds more for hatching insect eggs.

Even if Destruction really could destroy hundreds of Planets, they still had no way to be sure, across the entire universe—or even just narrowed down to the vicinity of their own Star Realm—exactly how many insect Planets were out there.

So from their perspective, it was enough to disgust Chen Ming a bit without doing too much.

While the Mechanical Race was taking care of its own resources, it assembled a fleet at the earliest possible moment.

From the directions of other Star Systems in the logistics region that Chen Ming’s Insect Race hadn’t yet occupied, they launched attacks on the Insect Race Fleets that had just emerged from their Planets and were gathering within the Star Systems holding the Insect Hive Planets, fleets that had not yet fully joined up.

The Mechanical Race used the fastest speed to wipe out several fleets that had appeared from different Planets.

But compared to what Chen Ming was doing, what they accomplished could only be called a drop in the bucket.

They simply couldn’t Manufacture Cruisers the way Chen Ming did, digging them straight out of the soil.

Not counting reinforcements that had yet to show themselves, the Mechanical Race had only about forty thousand Cruisers in total.

In Chen Ming’s previous raid, they had already lost nearly half of those, and even a third of their Destroyers were gone. Only the Frigates were relatively intact, since they generally wouldn’t be heavily committed to battles involving higher‑class ships.

But Destroyers and Frigates were almost meaningless in battles against the Insect Race.

Only the number of Cruisers really mattered.

In short, under these circumstances,

the Mechanical Race’s existing power could only inflict sufficient damage on Chen Ming’s Insect Race Fleet when led by a Mother Ship; otherwise, they were actually inferior to those Cruiser Fleets that literally grew out of the ground.

And up to now, the Mechanical Race had a total of eight Mother Ships.

One was the Mother Ship that had been ambushed by the Insect Race Fleet at the very beginning.

Three had taken part in the last war and were currently dispatched to deal with the Black Mist Insect Race.

Another, the Destruction Carrier, was still sitting inside the Star System that housed the Star Gate, with no further moves.

Plus the three Mother Ships that just appeared today to handle the Insect Race near the Logistics Star Realm.

Eight in total.

You could maybe add the one that went to the Empire and got taken out by Lu Bai.

This total number was very close to Chen Ming’s earlier estimate of ten Mother Ships.

But Chen Ming felt that shouldn’t be the full count yet, since reinforcements from the Mechanical Race still hadn’t appeared.

Leaving aside the Destruction Carrier, the other Mother Ships were already enough for Chen Ming to start making some moves.

But he still wanted to wait a bit longer, because he felt that Destruction was the one that really had value.

To put it bluntly.

If he wanted to, with just a bit of cost he could obtain a Mother Ship from the Empire, maybe even pick up other classes of Main Ships from the Empire.