I Am The Swarm

When all the territories without internal conflict had been divided, what remained were contested and disputed lands with shared borders. However, the civilizations on the outermost edge of the Ji’s sphere of influence found themselves relatively free of such troubles.

Beyond them lay vast and unexplored frontiers, ready to be claimed, without the need for scheming and infighting with those within the inner circle.

But some issues cannot simply be avoided by choice.

A new regulation was enacted: to protect nascent civilizations, all native civilizations that had not yet stepped out from their home planet would have their surrounding star systems off-limits until their technological development reached a certain level.

This meant that discovering a native civilization could render at least four or five surrounding star systems undevelopable. While these star domains did not have an abundance of such native civilizations, they were far from rare. This severely restricted the expansion of outer-ring civilizations.

This regulation garnered widespread support among the outer species, as they held the majority in the inner circle.

Thus, conflicts arose not only between adjacent outer-ring civilizations but also between the inner and outer circles, dividing them into two camps.

The outer-ring camp soon realized that once these native civilizations matured, they generally avoided conflict with the established old civilizations along their borders, preferring instead to retreat and develop the vast expanses on the other side.

However, these civilizations would then encounter the same problems their predecessors faced: though space was vast, many star systems were protected, making detours cumbersome and governance challenging.