111: Chapter 111, the tactical analysis template for Zerg swarms, was listed as a compulsory course at the Imperial Military Academy.

Marcus Aurelian stood on the podium, gathering five student simulation reports one by one and stacking them neatly on the edge of the podium.

None of the fifty students moved; on the tactical data slates in front of them, the cold green original text of The Swarm's technical attachments still glowed, alongside the analysis notes Marcus had written line by line in red annotations.

The holographic star map of the simulation chamber was still rotating slowly, with the blue icons of the sixteen Imperial anchorages and the purple trajectory of The Swarm's Leviathan Battle Group at the edge of the Milky Way facing each other from opposite ends of the map.

"In the previous round of simulation, you dug out the Tyranid tactical analysis template from The Swarm's attachments, proving that every technical document submitted by The Swarm during the Coalition era was not waste paper."

Marcus pressed the holographic key, unfolding The Swarm's four-step closed loop—Prediction, Observation, Modeling, and Strike—layer by layer.

"But you have yet to answer a more important question: Why did The Swarm stuff these templates into the Coalition's shared database? It wasn't to let the Coalition learn how to fight the Tyranids. The Swarm doesn't need the Coalition to fight the Tyranids for it. It wanted the Coalition to learn how The Swarm thinks."

He walked to the first row of students; that student's data slate was displaying the last page of the Tyranid command neural layer attack process template.

At the bottom of the page was a note left by the Brood Queen, which the students had previously overlooked.

Marcus projected an enlarged version of that note onto the main screen— "When applying this template, the decision-making basis must be the comparison of the differences between one's own command chain and the enemy's. The effectiveness of any tactical template depends on the user's depth of understanding of their own weaknesses. It is recommended that the Coalition complete an independent assessment of its own command chain before using this template."

"Do you see?" Marcus scanned the classroom. "Every time The Swarm handed over a tactical template, it included a technical advisory: 'Examine yourself before use.'

The Coalition didn't see these advisories at the time because the Coalition was too busy arguing over interpretation clauses and voting weights.

Now, the Empire has dug these advisories out. What the Empire needs to learn is not just how The Swarm fights the Tyranids, but how The Swarm dismantles itself to the bone before every attack on an enemy."

He announced the final assignment for the second round of tactical simulation class: to formally incorporate The Swarm's four-step closed loop into the standard textbook of the Ultima Segmentum Military Academy, titled 《Manual of Hostile Logic Deduction and Self-Examination》.

The title page of the textbook was printed with the words the Brood Queen said during the Coalition legal definition negotiations— "The right of interpretation is not for use against enemies; it is for use against allies."

And Marcus's own annotation: "Now the Coalition is gone. The Empire must explain the survival laws of the Ultima Segmentum to itself."

Bern's holographic image connected from Griffin IV Anchorage.

The Grey Knights' psychic warning array had fully incorporated The Swarm's chaotic psychic infiltration mathematical model into the calibration parameters of the multi-layer warning network, and the psychic filtering efficiency of the Holy Power monitoring network had increased by a considerable percentage in field tests.

He said the Grey Knights Librarian had completed the compatibility verification of this model with the Holy Hammer Holy Power purification algorithm and recommended incorporating it into the standard filtering protocol for all Imperial Navy Void Shields.

Marcus recorded this suggestion in the textbook's appendix.

Heinrich sent a message from the Shield of the Emperor.

The Third Assault Fleet's engineers had installed the multi-node synchronization locking algorithm into the test environment of the independent fire control system, and the torpedo locking latency had been significantly reduced in the first round of simulation tests.

He said that once this algorithm completed field testing, the torpedo fire control systems of all Imperial Navy Strike Cruisers would be updated and upgraded.

Marcus likewise recorded the test data in the textbook's appendix.

Next were five students who deduced a general analysis framework from The Swarm attachments, named the "Self-Check Protocol."

This framework was not aimed at the Tyranids or Chaos; it was aimed at the user themselves.

The Self-Check Protocol required the user, before any tactical action, to first assume themselves to be the enemy, use the enemy's intelligence-gathering capabilities to reverse-examine their own defense system, identify weak points, and then patch them before the enemy could act.

"During the Coalition legal definition negotiations, the Brood Queen once said one thing to me in private."

Marcus stood on the podium, recalling the scene at the time. "She said: 'The rotation handover window issue exposed by the Coalition fleet during the Star of Judgment campaign was scanned for vulnerabilities by The Swarm in a very short time after the observer permissions were activated. It took you months to realize where you had been breached.'"

"Her meaning was clear—The Swarm sees the Empire more clearly than the Empire sees itself."

"Now the Empire must learn to see itself through The Swarm's eyes, and then plug its own vulnerabilities faster than The Swarm."

He incorporated the Self-Check Protocol into the core chapters of the textbook, requiring every student to complete at least one full self-check simulation of any Imperial Fleet anchorage before graduation, with the simulation standards referenced from the vulnerability scanning templates in The Swarm technical attachments.

For the last part of the course, Marcus projected the message the Overmind sent on the night the Coalition dissolved onto the main screen again— "The Swarm does not need the Coalition. The Coalition needs the Coalition. But the Coalition you need, The Swarm no longer needs."

He had every student perform a complete hostile logic deduction on this statement using The Swarm's four-step closed loop.

Prediction—The Swarm had preset the time window for the Coalition's dissolution at the very beginning of the Coalition's formation;

Observation—The Swarm had completed a passive scan of all the Imperial Fleet's defense vulnerabilities during the period when observer permissions for the Coalition shared database were active;

Modeling—The Swarm had quantified the Imperial Fleet's rotation cycles, supply chains, and Void Shield charging vulnerabilities into tactical data models during the Coalition legal definition negotiations;

Strike—The Swarm announced its withdrawal on the night of the Coalition's dissolution, while simultaneously activating the Universal Void Shield firmware rollback and the Universal Armor Plate abnormal code backdoor, completing a targeted disintegration of the Imperial Fleet's defense system in the shortest possible time.

"The Swarm never regarded the Coalition as a permanent ally. It regarded the Coalition as a time-limited tactical cooperation window, within which it completed all intelligence gathering and tactical modeling of the Imperial Fleet, and then executed the exit program at the exact same second the window closed. This was not betrayal; this was a plan."

Marcus closed the textbook. "Now the Empire must also learn to make its own plans."

He immediately notified Heinrich and Bern that the Military Academy had listed The Swarm's four-step closed loop and the Self-Check Protocol as core chapters of the compulsory course, and all Commanders of the Third Assault Fleet would complete self-check simulation training before the start of the next rotation cycle.

Self-check simulation reports from all anchorages in the Imperial Navy's Ultima Segmentum war zone would be submitted periodically to the Military Academy's Textbook Revision Committee as a reference for the continuous optimization of the independent combat system.

Finally, he had the communications officer tell Terra—The Empire would no longer submit drafts to any allies, but the Empire would perform self-checks treating every former ally as a potential opponent.