Space Odyssey from Abandoned Mining Space Station

Chapter 614: Chapter 190: Purgatory

Chen Ming won the battle in space by relying on illogical Spiritual Energy, an adversary the Mechanical Race had never encountered before.

However, after winning, he found that the situation of the Insect Queen on the ground was not optimistic.

Just now, while he quickly dealt with the second wave of reinforcements from the Mechanical Race, the Insect Queen was instead being pressured by the Mechanical Race.

The reason was the main force of the Mechanical Race, centipedes, which the Insect Race encountered just as they entered the city’s core area.

Those centipedes equipped with Charge Cannons could easily shatter the Insect Race’s most powerful front-line shields with a single shell, and the aftermath of the exploded shell impacted a large number of Insects with its penetrating power.

Although the massive Insects wouldn’t die from such a forty-centimeter diameter hole, it meant they couldn’t share the damage with other Insects.

They could only let explosions and arcs run rampant through the Insect swarm.

Thus, in the past short ten minutes at the city’s core area, the Mechanical Race, relying on the bombings of centipedes armed with Charge Cannons, firmly suppressed the number of Insects.

Moreover, these centipedes were not only equipped with Charge Cannons but also two other types of weapons.

Prison Fire Cannons and Charge Machine Guns.

The Prison Fire Cannon was somewhat better, essentially a Charge Cannon with incendiary shell versions, yet with less penetration, having larger ranges of flaming damage upon explosion.

But when flames were faced with various countermeasures from the ground Insect Race, their effectiveness was less than ideal; instead, pure impact or other forms of damage were more lethal to the Insects.

For instance, the distant bombardment by Blazing Silkworms utilising the Supreme Point’s Speed Particle Spear to compel Chen Ming to provide support earlier, and now the arcs produced by Charge Cannon explosions.

These two types of damage could deliver devastating blows to the Insect Race.

The Charge Machine Guns also possessed the capacity to destroy Insects.

Despite being called Machine Guns, they were no different from autocannons.

The bullet diameters were large enough to effortlessly sever Insect limbs, while also possessing frightening penetration similar to Charge Cannon shells.

Coupled with the guns’ innate high firing rate and Charged Bullets’ special ability to explode at the point of impact, creating intense arcs.

These bullets, after penetrating the Insects’ front lines in bulk, could still inflict ongoing harm to other Insects.

In dense swarms of Insects, their damage level vastly exceeded that of the Prison Fire Cannons.

It was this kind of centipede equipped with different types of weaponry, along with other Mechanical Race members, that suppressed the Insect Race’s advancement, even showing signs of counterattack.

Just as Chen Ming was about to enact his plan to support the ground forces, previously intended before encountering the second wave of Mechanical Race reinforcements.

He suddenly noticed masses of fungus rising once again on the fungal mat beneath the Insect Race’s feet.

Moreover, the density of the fungus was greater than before, akin to a purple curtain enveloping the Insect and Mechanical Race forces at the front line.

Though the Blazing Silkworms and centipedes equipped with Prison Fire Cannons were rapidly clearing these airborne fungi, when the coverage and density reached a certain level, the flames couldn’t completely eradicate them.

The most they could achieve was ensuring all fungi landing on the intensely high-temperature bodies of the Blazing Silkworms perished.

Most of the remaining Mechanical Race members at the front line were still covered by these fungi.

Chen Ming immediately recognized the peculiarity of these fungi when they first emerged.

They weren’t the fungi previously used by the Insect Queen to detect hidden Mechanical Race units, or it’s inaccurate to call them fungi.

Because Chen Ming realized that the critical factor wasn’t the fungi themselves, but micro insects hidden within.

These weren’t insects created previously by Chen Ming and the Insect Queen; rather, they were newly cultivated insects by the Insect Queen just now.

The reason for the Insect Queen cultivating new insects was only because of those troublesome centipedes.

This was the Insect Queen’s strategy against the centipedes.

Chen Ming withdrew his hand from the Supreme Point control panel and continued watching.

Coincidentally, he was eager to learn the extent of the Insect Queen’s capabilities.

As a large number of fungi adhered to the Mechanical Race bodies at the front line.

Chen Ming noticed these fungi gradually spread across the mechanical structures, seeping into their bodies through gaps in their armor and structures.

From other Insect Race members’ perspectives, the follow-up activities of the fungi and insects once inside the mechanical structures weren’t visible.

Thus, Chen Ming immediately connected his consciousness to one of these micro insects, streaming what they ’saw’ directly to his view.

To say they were seeing wasn’t entirely accurate, as these micro insects didn’t have vision; they perceived their surroundings through their specific structure and nearby fungi.

Furthermore, Chen Ming accessed the micro insects’ nervous system using the Hive Mind Network and Spiritual Energy Assistance to capture the scenes that the insects were ’viewing’.

Consequently, the perspective Chen Ming experienced was extremely awkward.

Nevertheless, after adjusting for a while, he got used to it and understood the actions of the micro insects.

These Insects rooted in place inside the Mechanical Race bodies, protected by the surrounding fungi.

Drawing strength by absorbing incredibly small energy crystals they carried and the Mechanical Race’s operating energy, they expanded and continued spreading.

The fungi gradually spread to the bottom of the mechanical structures, returning to the outside.