Chapter 1 The Arrival at L-B-35

The Tortoise Rock Table had been traveling through hyperspace for several hours, finally disengaging in a brand new star sector. With a flash of light suddenly illuminating space, the warped space opened, and the silver-white Inspector's flagship slowly emerged from the spatial gate.

"Arrived at L-B-35 Outpost Nest, automatic navigation terminated."

Nolan's voice startled Hao Ren from the star chart. He looked up and saw the simulated projections around the bridge gradually expanding, with external monitors projecting a panoramic view of the outside of the ship onto the control platform.

He discovered that the ship had arrived in a strange airspace surrounded by dust clouds. The background of space here had a faint lilac hue, perhaps due to some thin, primordial cloud that had failed to form a galaxy. In the distance, a series of distinct, bright grey bands could be seen, the birthplace of new stars. Ahead of the Tortoise Rock Table's course, he saw the foothold that the drone swarm had built here.

A massive and bizarre metal fortress floated in space. It looked like a persimmon with several protrusions, a near-circular structure with a radius of several kilometers, concave in the center and raised around the edges. The massive fortress was a mix of greyish-white and deep black, with a large amount of metal and rock piled together, making it look like some strange relic of civilization. A large number of flickering lights could be seen along the edge of the fortress, and many tube-like structures protruded from the most densely lit areas. Busy drones moved in and out of those pipe openings like busy worker bees.

In the recessed area in the center of this huge fortress, several huge antenna-like structures could be seen, placed within a protective network of self-defense cannons, and patrolled by combat drones. Although all this firepower was "civilian grade," it still looked imposing.

This was the nest built by the drone swarm. It did not conform to human aesthetics and looked like a huge ant nest haphazardly piled up with metal and stones. The machines simply built this thing according to the principles of convenience and usability, but they did not know how to decorate their home. This fortress was one of the larger nests of the drone swarm. Originally, a group of outpost drones would have taken a long time to build a base of this size, but the L-B-35 sequence of swarms were lucky enough to find an asteroid of suitable size and hardness, so they hollowed out the celestial body and built their proliferation factories and various facilities inside.

The Tortoise Rock Table slowly flew towards a large platform on the edge of the strange fortress, and Nolan's voice continued to broadcast on the bridge: "Automatic navigation to the drone nest, welcome and guidance signals identified. Entering docking procedure, main thruster stopped, auxiliary thruster running—do I really have to report these things to you in such a stupid tone every time?"

"Don't interject other things when reporting the status of the ship," Hao Ren glanced at the small Nolan projection floating on the navigation map. "Can we just follow the manual?"

Nolan pouted and waved her hand, watching from her first-person perspective as the Tortoise Rock Table slowly approached the strange fortress that resembled an anthill. A large number of drones—including the original L-B-35 swarm and those that had just rushed over to support from nearby nodes—flew around her like a swarm of insects guarding the nest. Nolan's tone couldn't help but sound a little strange: "I feel like this place is kind of scary, especially the nest in front, like an insect hive."

Lily also had some complaints about this: "I didn't know that the places where these drones gathered were so eerie."

In fact, most of Hao Ren's attention was also drawn to the strange drone nest: this was the first time he had seen a nest.

Although he initially released the mother ship of these drones and gave them expansion and reconnaissance instructions, he had only ever met the roaming swarm formations in space, or simply communicated with the swarm consciousness on the communicator. He had never personally come to see what the breeding factory of these drones looked like.

After the swarm expanded to this day, he finally saw the first completed nest node. To be honest, the appearance of this nest was indeed a bit different from what he had expected.

He thought this thing should look more like a coffin, after all, the technology-side items sent down by the Xiling God System were basically coffin-shaped.

The Tortoise Rock Table slowly stopped on the platform under the traction of the guidance signal. A set of mechanical devices floated up from under the platform to hold the ship steady. Then Hao Ren and his party left the flagship and entered the depths of the nest through a duct.

In order to welcome the "Swarm Commander," this nest had self-adjusted after receiving the visit instruction from its superior. It constructed a temporary inner atmosphere and temperature control system to make Hao Ren and the others feel more comfortable when walking inside. Two small, chubby drones came out of the nest core to greet their master. They were two "Wanderer Probes." These small machines did not operate in outer space, but were specially set up in places like nests or outposts to carry out internal patrols and mechanical maintenance, just like the autonomous machines inside the Tortoise Rock Table.

Hao Ren walked along the pipeline corridor led by the Wanderer Probes. Originally, inspecting the nest was just a casual act, but he didn't expect to see such interesting things here. The interior of the drone nest was as bizarre as its exterior, lacking any human aesthetic features. The machines simply built wide tubular passages and reinforced supports according to their needs, so metal and raw asteroid rock were intertwined without modification, making the interior of the fortress look like the digestive system of some huge steel monster.

It was brightly lit inside, and the busy swarms shuttled through various holes and ducts, a busy scene.

Lily muttered as she watched such a scene: "It feels like a villain's base."

Before Hao Ren could say anything, a stiff voice suddenly came from all around: "It is only a coincidence, madam."

Lily "wow"ed. She saw a huge, amorphous face appear in mid-air in front of her. This face was projected with pale blue light, surrounded by countless small streams of light flowing continuously. It turned out that everyone had unknowingly arrived at a larger nest chamber. Several main pipes converged here, forming a large oval space. Many mechanical devices operated in this chamber in a low voice. These machines all had Xiling characteristics, but because they were placed in such a seemingly insect nest, everything seemed a bit strange.

"Yo, Swarm," Hao Ren greeted the face. Although he also felt that the atmosphere of this nest was strange, he had read all the relevant information in the Inspector's Manual before releasing the drones, and he had also consulted with many colleagues about the swarm later on, so he seemed very calm, because he knew that this thing was like this. "Speaking of which, this is the first time I've seen your 'nest'."

"The Swarm is honored," the huge face trembled, revealing an ever-changing smile, but the voice was still stiff. "I did not expect the Commander to suddenly want to personally enter the interior of the nest, so I hastily built an ecological environment. I hope this environment is still comfortable."

"Uh, it's pretty good," Hao Ren scratched his hair. "I just thought about coming to see it at the time. I didn't expect it would cause you so much trouble."

"The Swarm does not consider this 'trouble'," the big blue face said stiffly. "This is within my capabilities, therefore it is a normal load."

"Okay, let's not talk about this," Hao Ren knew that the Swarm's thinking was relatively rigid, so he directly skipped this topic. "Regarding those lens traces that were tracked before, is there any new information?"

"Less than twelve hours have passed since those traces were first discovered, and no probes have sent back more intelligence. The search area is being expanded, and it is estimated that it will take at least twenty-four hours for further discoveries."

"Well, that's what I thought. It's not that easy," Hao Ren mumbled, touching his chin, but he was not impatient because of this, because after seeing the drone's nest, he suddenly discovered that there were also many things here that could let him pass the time. It seemed that waiting for news at this "outpost" would not be boring, "Then let's wait. It just so happens that I finally have the opportunity to learn about the work of the drone swarm. Speaking of which, you just mentioned 'just a coincidence'? Do you know what Lily was talking about?"

A large number of holographic projections immediately appeared around the chamber. Those projections prominently showed various film clips—from humans or other alien races, movies, TV series, animation, games, and simple video clips—depicting various drone swarm rebellions or stories of intelligent robots going berserk. Some of them were obviously fantasy, but some were disturbing: they looked a bit like realistic documentaries.

Everyone looked at these suddenly displayed short films, and they didn't know what to say, but apart from Lily, who was a little nervous, the others seemed very calm: because these guys didn't watch science fiction movies at all, and Izhaks didn't even know what Ai going berserk was...

The corners of Hao Ren's mouth twitched: "So you can collect these... Speaking of which, don't you think it's weird to watch these things?"

"I can connect to the Empire's data network. Collecting these cultural works is my personal hobby. They reflect interesting parts of the basic native race's thought process, and some reflect 'civilization forms'," the swarm consciousness answered in a stiff manner, "The plots of drone swarm rebellions and Ai constantly developing out of control are very interesting and have discussion value. They look like serious documentary literature, but there are also overhead romantic parts. They are popular topics on our forum."

Hao Ren was stunned as he listened. The last sentence of the swarm consciousness stunned him: "Your...forum? What forum do you have?"

He suddenly realized that even though he had read many manuals and asked his colleagues for a lot of homework, he still knew very little about the drone empire that he created with his own hands.

This increasingly powerful Ai was becoming more and more like a living person.