Chapter 354: Exchanging Casualties
In sheer numbers, the Swarm’s losses appeared to be several times greater than the Daqi’s. However, when analyzed from a damage assessment perspective, the Swarm had actually fared well—even profited significantly.
The Swarm primarily lost 500 to 700 meter Space Octopuses, while the Daqi lost 2,000 meter giant warships. Although their lengths seemed comparable, the tonnage of the Daqi warships was tens or even hundreds of times greater than that of the Swarm’s units.
From a tonnage perspective, the Daqi had taken a severe beating.
This outcome wasn’t a fluke. It was the result of a combination of elements.
Surprise tactics played a part, but without the raw strength to match, no amount of trickery would have made a difference.
The external reactive armor of Daqi warships was specially designed to counter energy-based weapons, boasting exceptionally high resistance. This was why they could endure barrages of thousands of energy cannons.
The Swarm, by contrast, relied solely on their armor’s resilience, with no clever tricks involved. If this battle had taken place decades earlier, the losses among the Primordial bodies would have been exponentially higher. In fact, the Daqi might have obliterated the Swarm’s Izumo base at minimal cost.
The turning point came over a decade ago during the First Battle of Planet Raze. In that conflict, the Swarm managed to breach the Riken defenses and successfully establish fungal carpets on the surface of Planet Raze. These mats endured relentless bombardment from the Rikens, day and night.
During this period, the Swarm gathered an abundance of data, prompting genetic modifications to their fungal carpets. The immediate effect was that Riken energy beam attacks became progressively less effective. Ultimately, the Rikens resorted to deploying Radiance of Rikens, vaporizing the fungal carpets entirely.