I Am The Swarm-Chapter 742: Struggle

Sarah Kerrigan, trapped in the encirclement, naturally noticed the battlefield’s changes and realized that the rescue plan had been set into motion. To increase her chances of escape, she needed to take a more proactive approach.

The five energy storage organs began outputting energy as a Negative Energy Shield suddenly appeared beneath Sarah’s feet, instantly erasing the soil it touched.

Without any support, Sarah’s body continued to fall. The Negative Energy Shield beneath her feet continuously made contact with new layers of soil and rocks, erasing them as if she were riding an invisible elevator. Sarah plummeted downward at a speed several times faster than before.

Meanwhile, her energy reserves depleted rapidly, like a balloon with a large hole. Ideally, Sarah should have delayed for a bit longer, waiting for the lower soil layers to collapse and reduce the distance to the underground open area. This would allow her to conserve more energy for potential emergencies. However, the Ji race had already preemptively countered this by covertly reinforcing the soil beneath her feet.

The Ji teams surrounding Sarah numbered over a hundred. While their J-Z-901 gel solution couldn’t reinforce the entire battlefield, pooling their resources was more than sufficient to reinforce the area around and beneath Sarah.

From the start, the Ji race knew that reinforcing the entire battlefield wouldn’t succeed. Thus, hidden within this plan were other contingencies.

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They didn’t need to reinforce the whole battlefield—only Sarah’s location mattered. Their earlier actions were merely misdirection to throw off the Swarm’s strategy.

“Stop her!” Although Plan B was essentially successful, compared to Plan A, the reinforced area of Plan B was much smaller, meaning a lower margin for error.

They had to confine Sarah within this area before her energy was depleted; otherwise, all their previous efforts would be in vain.

Sarah understood this point, which is why she opted for the fastest method to leave. However, the Ji race wouldn’t let her escape easily. During their earlier skirmishes, they had secretly reinforced nearly a hundred meters of soil beneath her feet. What seemed like a short distance—Sarah could traverse it in less than a second at her supersonic speed—now felt like an insurmountable chasm.

J-Z-901 gel solution had a particularly nasty characteristic: the side in contact with objects would rapidly solidify, reaching hardness comparable to some mid-ring civilizations warship alloys.

This hardness allowed it to withstand a few strikes from high-molecular blades. Don’t underestimate this slight difference—cutting through in one strike versus two or three represented a significant increase in physical and energy consumption.

The non-adhering side of J-Z-901 remained highly viscous. Each strike of the high-molecular blade would get partially stuck in the gel, increasing the weapon’s weight and dulling its edge, making it extremely difficult to handle.

Thus, when the ground beneath her consisted entirely of a mixture of soil, rocks, and J-Z-901, Sarah was forced to expand the Negative Energy Shield beneath her feet to create enough space to avoid contact with the surrounding mud-gel mixture.

The additional energy drain from this expanded shield wasn’t to be underestimated; calculations showed Sarah would lose at least thirty percent of her descent distance. This development worried her, as she still didn’t know the thickness of the soil beneath her. If it exceeded a hundred meters, she might genuinely be trapped here.

At this moment, the Ji race deployed another contingency. A type of ammunition completely opposite to the blunt-nosed projectiles, these sharp-tipped, elongated bullets possessed extraordinary penetration power. Fired from specially enhanced firearms, they could traverse hundreds of meters of soil, even penetrating over a hundred meters of gel-soil. Within fifty meters, they still retained considerable lethality.

Based on Selina’s calculated lead, Ji soldiers began firing fiercely at the unseen Sarah. Though each squad carried only a small number of these special armor-piercing rounds, it was more than sufficient to intercept Sarah.

Bullets penetrated the soil layers from all directions, accurately striking the falling Sarah. With no room to dodge, she could only endure the hits.

Although the gel-soil had absorbed most of the bullets’ power, leaving insufficient force to breach her bio-armor, their kinetic energy still destabilized her body.

In this situation, she needed to exert more effort to maintain balance.

However, the barrage was overwhelming, and without any foothold, despite her best efforts, her body occasionally brushed against the surrounding walls. After a few instances, her body was coated with a thick layer of J-Z-901 gel-soil mixture.

Additionally, as the armor-piercing bullets traversed the gel-soil, they inevitably picked up some J-Z-901 gel. Upon contact with her body, there was a chance they would adhere, increasing her contact surface.

Back and forth, Sarah’s body became encased in a thick layer of J-Z-901 gel-soil, trapping her in the pipe, immobilized. Left with no choice, she activated the Negative Energy Shield at full power, creating a circle around her body to erase these burdens.

But not long after she resumed her descent, the same situation recurred, forcing her to repeat the action. This greatly slowed her fall and, more importantly, multiplied her energy consumption. She no longer had enough energy to traverse this special gel prison.

“That’s it; she definitely doesn’t have enough energy to finish this journey!”

“Is the gel prison’s stabilization complete?”

“It’s been done for a while. Even if the land where this battlefield is located collapses entirely, this area will remain in its original position.”

“Good. Now prepare to capture her. We’ve spent too much time here.”

“What about our soldiers who fell below?”

“After capturing the target, try to rescue them if possible. But we must leave within a day. If there’s any sign of a protracted battle, we must immediately abandon them and evacuate.”

“It seems that’s the only option.”

At this point, Sarah seemed to have been sentenced to her fate, like a fish on a chopping block, at the mercy of others. However, she believed she could still struggle a bit.