224: Chapter 225 The Mystery of the Mother Nest

Meanwhile, deep within the hive ship, protected by layers of fleet, in the core command chamber.

A gargantuan monster, as large as a mountain, with countless neural tentacles connecting directly to the hive ship's flesh network—the Norn Queen—was receiving the latest hunting intel from the entire interstellar battlefield through the Hive Mind.

However, after receiving and aggregating the frontline reports, the Norn Queen's emotionless compound eyes were, for the first time ever, filled with a deep logical confusion regarding this group of prey.

Throughout the long eons of cosmic consumption, the Tyranids had encountered the human race many times before.

They were relatively familiar with human genetic structures and combat patterns.

In the Hive Mind's cognition, humans were completely different from the highly unified swarm.

The physical differences between individual humans were immense, and their thoughts were extremely chaotic and filled with internal strife.

But no matter how human tactics changed, their typical survival mode relied on vast numbers of weak civilians to extract resources to support a tiny minority of elite warriors.

As long as the swarm concentrated its superior forces to completely surround, kill, and devour those tough elite groups, the remaining vast number of humans would simply be free biomass that could be eaten without any effort.

In fact, the patterns summarized by the swarm during the process of devouring the universe were mostly like this.

Species where every individual was exceptionally powerful usually had very small populations and were difficult to reproduce; while species as numerous as ants often had low individual combat power and could only rely on being farmed.

But! The group of humans encountered in this galaxy today was very wrong! Very wrong indeed!

The Norn Queen keenly sensed that these formidable human individuals, who were frantically boarding their ships, would reappear from somewhere not long after being torn apart and killed by the bugs!

This unreasonable resurrection mechanism was very similar to the swarm's top-tier command unit—the Norn Emissary.

After a Norn Emissary dies in battle, its memory and experience return to the hive, and the next time it hatches, it becomes stronger.

But! The Norn Queen quickly calculated the conservation of biomass consumption in her mind.

The entire Tyranid fleet needed to devour an entire planet's resources to barely cultivate a few top-tier Norn Emissaries.

Yet, what about that group of humans on the other side?!

There were hundreds of thousands of those individuals with such formidable combat power! And they seemed as if they could never be killed off!

Where on earth did they get such massive amounts of energy to support this level of infinite resurrection?!

This completely violated the laws of cosmic energy!

The Norn Queen quickly calculated the biomass loss since the start of the war.

Her rational hive instinct suggested that if there were any more fleet losses exceeding expectations, she should immediately order a retreat and change routes to devour other galaxies.

But before retreating, as an instinct of the Great Devourer, she urgently needed to analyze the genetic code of these special humans!

Fortunately, not long ago, the boarding defense forces in a frigate successfully captured a live player who had fallen behind because they had charged too recklessly, using neurotoxins.

The Norn Queen cast her gaze toward the digestion pool below.

A giant phagocyte writhed, opened its massive maw, and spat that pile of chewed-up player flesh, along with the wreckage of their Power Armor, into the smoking, highly acidic digestion pool.

The texture of this flesh was unimaginably tough, but under the decomposition of the mothership's high-concentration acid, it eventually began to slowly melt and break down into basic amino acids and proteins.

However! When the Norn Queen extended her neural tentacles, attempting to contact, analyze, and absorb the core genetic sequences belonging to the human warriors, she was shocked to discover!

These genetic chains seemed to be completely locked by some higher-dimensional power!

No matter how the digestion pool broke them down, these genetic fragments could not be read or integrated by the Hive Mind's gene bank!

To the Tyranids, this group of humans' genes were like a pile of unparseable junk code. They couldn't be absorbed at all!

Several hours later.

In the real world, the official Fire Seed forum.

Because a large number of casual players in space listened to the deception, it led to a disastrous failure in boarding.

A large number of players who had been blasted into cosmic dust and were in the resurrection cooldown period were bored, so they gathered on the forum to chat and argue crazily.

And at this moment, Flame Fist, having successfully blown up an enemy ship, proudly posted a pinned hot topic on the forum homepage:

"Report! The Brotherhood of Steel's total military merit has soared again! We have reclaimed the second spot on the military merit leaderboard! Hehe!"

Below, Nicotine Truth immediately replied:

[Nicotine Truth]: "Here, we want to especially thank our brothers from other legions! Thank you for blindly charging in front with your lives, helping us attract a large amount of anti-aircraft fire and aggro. Our boarding success rate in the rocket pods this time was incredibly high! Love you all!"

[Use Fire Punch]: "The Brotherhood's internal group has been set up! Happy today, so I'm giving out big red envelopes in the group to spread the wealth! Join quickly!"

However, once this post was out, those casual players who had been hot-headed the night before and followed along to their deaths couldn't hold it in anymore and started cursing in the comments.

[I Want to Eat BBQ]: "Damn it! You guys still have the nerve to say that! I spent 20,000 points on custom Power Armor and a high-precision sniper rifle, and I was evaporated by a plasma cannon along with my pod halfway there! My entire god-tier gear is gone! I didn't even get a single hair!"

[I Want to Eat BBQ]: "By the way, are there any guilds in the game that specialize in salvage? Can anyone go to coordinates 045 to help me fish out my gear wreckage? I'm willing to pay double the points as a reward!"

[Digging with Both Hands]: "Forget it, brother! That gear, along with your corpse fragments, is still floating in space frozen like a popsicle. Who the hell dares to brave the bugs' artillery fire to go into the void to fish up your scrap metal? Just accept your fate."

[Grumpy Bro]: "Damn it! The more I think about it, the angrier I get! Who was that smartass last night who kept saying with such certainty that we should go for the first kill on the mothership and use the hook-and-swap strategy?! Stand up, you bastard!"

[Tactical Master]: "Ahem... well, guys, I just had bad luck last night. Although we didn't touch the mothership, our squad successfully blew up a frigate, so it wasn't a total loss."

[Grumpy Bro]: "No! Didn't you swear last night that the whole army was going to charge the mothership?! Why did you run off to pick on the soft targets and blow up the peripheral frigates?! You were just treating us like fools and baiting us into being cannon fodder, weren't you?!"

The comments section was instantly flooded by angry players, and Tactical Master was flamed so hard he went offline, never daring to show his face again.

Inside The Guardian fortress.

Lin Li was sitting in the command chair, drinking water, while peeking at the annual drama on the forum from the corner of his eye.

Seeing that group of players who had been scammed until they didn't even have their underwear left, Lin Li's face was twisted with laughter.

"Hahaha! That's what you get for not listening to commands and messing around, you unfilial brats! Now you know how dangerous space warfare is, right? See if you dare to charge blindly again."

But laughter aside, Lin Li deeply acknowledged the tactical execution of Flame Fist's tough guys in his heart.

The Brotherhood of Steel's efficiency in blowing up ships was ridiculously high.

As long as they successfully boarded, those lunatics could always accurately find the power room within five hours and use nuclear bombs to blow the bugs' ship apart from the inside.

This was practically a Warhammer-style professional boarding and demolition crew.

If they kept going at this casualty ratio.

As long as the players' resurrection counts could keep up, one day, that massive Tyranid fleet on the other side would not be able to withstand this kind of slow-but-steady attrition.

Just as Lin Li was calculating the cycle of the war of attrition in his mind.

Iron Man 73's red eye flashed, and it suddenly issued an urgent alert:

"Creator, abnormal logistics data detected at the base!"

"Due to the high frequency of players dying in space battles over the past few days, the base biomass reserve used for reshaping and resurrecting clones in Shelter is critically low! It is expected to be completely bottomed out in twelve hours!"

Hearing this, Lin Li suddenly snapped back to reality and put down his water cup.

Although a lack of biomass wasn't a fatal problem that would lead to a total wipeout.

But if the resurrection pods stopped working, it could very likely lead to a large number of high-level players being unable to resurrect on time to join the battlefield after death!

Once the players' forces had a gap, the defensive firepower network on the frontline would immediately develop a huge hole.

"Why is it being consumed so fast?" Lin Li frowned.

Previously, Shelter recycled biomass by having players go to the surface to pick up the corpses of those Orks and throw them into the matter recycler for refining.

The conversion efficiency of those large-sized Orks was relatively high.

However, with the players' frantic hunting and food development during this period.

The number of Orks in the north of the outpost had been harvested crop after crop.

Lin Li stroked his chin, his gaze suddenly landing on the holographic screen, on the countless Tyranids corpses floating in the space battlefield and on the surface.

"Got it!"

Lin Li's eyes lit up, and a smile curled at the corner of his mouth,

"Since the Orks are gone, we'll just recycle the bugs' corpses directly! Throwing the bugs into the recycler can extract high-purity biomass just the same!"

"Perfect! That bunch of bankrupt players on the forum who failed their boarding mission last night and lost their shirts are just worrying about where to earn points!"

Lin Li immediately opened the lord's backend operation panel and quickly edited a server-wide announcement.

"Seven! Publish a new server-wide daily loop mission for me—Battlefield Scavenger!"

"Mission content: Players can pilot logistics ships or go to the surface war zone to collect and salvage any Tyranids corpse wreckage with all their might! As long as the wreckage is transported back to the designated matter recycling station, they can exchange it for generous points!"

"Go! Let that bunch of bankrupt players all be space cleaners for me!"