Star Citizen Online: Isekai Edition

Chapter 126 Bugs, Bugs, Bugs Everywhere

arcturus was somewhat surprised because, for the past day, they had been en route to the area where the arachnids were being active; both zehal and jeniale were behaving very well, rather too well.

to the point where it was becoming suspicious.

but he guessed that it was a good thing because at least they were not fighting amongst each other all day. not to mention, just yesterday, they got a message from the directorate that a violent cosmic storm was approaching the surrounding star systems, and it would last for a longer time.

the most modest guesses of the educated people were that the cosmic storm would pass in a few weeks at the fastest, but realistically speaking, it could remain here for a few months. this information rather soured the mood of the vehicle because it meant that nothing would be able to leave these star systems or enter these star systems.

when the cosmic storm happened and covered certain area within the space, it rendered all of the space travel methods entirely useless and severed the area from the rest of the space.

nothing would get out, and nothing would get in.

so the only thing that they could do was to wait for the cosmic storm to disperse naturally and this could take a very long time. fortunately, this one that was covering the ziras star system and the surrounding star systems would last only a few months maximally as was predicted.

at the same time, arcturus didn't really know if this was a good thing or a bad thing to happen just now. on the one hand, the ziras iv was cut off from any possible reinforcements that would be arriving from the imperial highcom, while on the other hand, this also means that arachnids wouldn't be able to send in here any of their hive fleets.

this was certainly good news because he was sure that the arachnid hive fleet would arrive sooner or later at the ziras iv. the hive fleet always arrived at the place where the arachnid nests were located.

it was rather standard procedure when the arachnids were invading some world deep in the enemy territory. they would first infiltrate the said planet, create their nest there, and cause problems for the local population.

when the arachnid nest got big enough and strong enough, it would launch an invasion into the planet itself and also send the psionic signal to the hive fleet and summon the hive fleet, which would arrive either at the same time when the attacks were starting or shortly after.

this way, they had the somewhat unique and irreplaceable opportunity to deal with the arachnid nest without any outside interference, but at the same time, being cut from the outside support was bad.

however, when arcturus talked with the agent from the directorate that assigned this mission, he mentioned that they could kill the brain bugs and other types of bugs that were used as communication methods with their hiveminds.

this way, if the bugs were indeed planning a full-scale invasion of this world, they would be able to thwart their plans because when the cosmic storm covered the entire planet, it rendered any kind of psionic communication useless.

so, not even the bugs would be able to communicate with their hiveminds because the cosmic storm was shrouding everything. perhaps only the beyonder realm entities were able to breach forcefully through the cosmic storm, but for anyone under the beyonder realm, it was mission impossible.

even for some of the beyonders, it could be rather dangerous to force their way through the violent and powerful cosmic storms. apparently, there were cases when some more unlucky beoynders were killed in the cosmic storms when they tried to force their way through.

another way would be to have specialized starships made from extremely durable materials that were considered rare commodities even among the high-level civilizations and high-level star nations.

one could say that it was really fate that the cosmic storm came just right now, at the time when the colony was under the threat of the arachnids, and now it was isolated from the outside world for an unknown amount of time.

"the information gathered on the arachnids is incomplete, and in some areas, it's even contradictory. with someone falsifying the reports about the strength of the arachnids and sabotaging the investigation efforts, we are basically on zero. though, i have two possible explanations for that."

for several days, they spent time in an armored vehicle that was at least huge enough to accommodate four or five people comfortably. these kinds of armored winter vehicles were made for long-term trips into the freezing wilderness of the ziras iv.

so one could sleep there or eat without problems, though moving through the place was still rather complicated, so they needed to make a short stop every few hours so the three of them could stretch out their bodies.

zehal was highly confident in her own analysis of the situation, and she thought that the actual numbers of the arachnids would be way lesser compared to what was predicted or reported.

it even sounded logical, but the only times that the higher numbers of the arachnids appeared were on the paper. yet when zehal started searching for the encounters with the arachnids on the ziras iv, there were not many results, and even when there were some, it was with some really powerful bugs.

'master, approximately several thirty kilometers ahead of us, i am sensing some bug activity.'

suddenly as they were in the middle of their talk, the red queen that was in the control of the armored vehicle. the super advanced hyper artificial intelligence also only scans the area with the sensors that are installed on the top of the vehicle so they can see the dangers ahead.

the devices had a rather wide radius of several tens of kilometers as they were used to scout the entire area ahead, which was crucial for the successful exploration of the planet by the colonists.

with that, they were able to detect the threat from far and safe distance, just like right now, when the red queen noticed small groups of the bugs that were wandering here. which was rather suspicious because it was far from the arachnid nest.

this was the most unusual because this was the closest that the arachnids were ever sighed most probably, but according to several sources that they had in their disposition, it seemed to be true.

"how many of the bugs are there and of what classes?"

arcturus asked because even though the red queen reported the presence of the bugs in this place, he suspected that this was for sure just a scouting party of the bugs. most probably, they were searching for biomass due to the lack of it on the entire planet.

in most of the places, the arachnids were always the top predators, but on the ziras iv, the arachnids were just one of many top predators on the planet. the beasts that lived on the ziras iv were as fierce and as dangerous as many of the arachnids, so the bugs had a lot of problems gathering enough biomass for their growth.

'mostly warrior bugs, few tiger warrior bugs and scarab scout bugs. altogether, there is something around fifty bugs.'

that were actually not that high numbers; he would have expected at least a few hundred bugs, not just a meager fifty bugs. this showed that the numbers of the arachnids were indeed not as high as one would have thought.

"are they doing anything else aside from scouting the territory?"

zehal asked as she was curious about the behavior of the bugs. even though she primarily studied advanced technology, theoretical metaphysics, and other stuff that nobody among them understood, she was rather fascinated with the bugs.

'aside from hunting for the beasts, i am not getting any other activity from the bugs as we area speaking right now. this seems to be the biomass gathering party according to my prediction based on the standard behavioral patterns of the arachnids.'

red queen answered as she ran an analysis on the behavior patterns of the arachhnids based on the information that she could gather from the imperial netsphere and extranet about the bugs.

"then it's set, we are going to ambush them and dispose of them... it seems that they are really in dire need of the biomass if they are sending the gathering parties that far from their nest."

the arachnid nest was located at least one week from the location where they were right now, but they managed to encounter the bugs even here.

so it meant that the arachnids were sending their biomass gathering parties rather far from the location of their nest. it seemed that they couldn't find biomass close to the location of their nest.

thus, they were forced to search in the other areas, which was rather dangerous for them because this was already pretty close to the first defensive outposts of the ziria.

"red queen, continue to monitor the bugs and take us closer to them."

arcturus ordered to his artificial intelligence as they contained directly towards the bugs that were already waiting for them to be killed.