Distantly Mar felt the forest burning and several of her units dying, the thermite bomb had almost annihilated her Juggernaut Spider, but pumping energy into reinforcing it along with separating itself from most of the destroyed body saved it from death. The Soldiers and Fungal Zombies in the clearing were almost all destroyed by the sudden explosion and the subsequent inferno. Yet, she didn't care as she felt the Swarm retreating while Ysandra came to use her magics to hinder the forest fire from bringing untold devastation on the entire forest.

Mar the Sovereign Swarm could not care about these things, however, as they were floored by the revelation that had been sparked when her interface touched the interface of the adventurer. Mar had been a human from another world called Earth at some point. They thought she was probably female back then, but even now the memories of the time before the fire were incomplete. Maybe he had been male back then? Their residual self-image was a scorched human being without any real features to speak of, so it wasn't exactly easy to get anything from that.

Stories, tropes, concepts, and random bits of trivia were the only things that Mar could truly say that they remembered. He didn't actually retain any events with any kind of real specificity, something had ground down her previous existence until they were only a loose collection of fragments. From there they had been unleashed on this world as a Conquest Seed, the Sovereign Swarm had always known this but never properly reflected on the situation.

With the knowledge that they now had, it was time to reevaluate her approach when dealing with life. He was the Sovereign Swarm and that meant that they were destined to consume and subjugate everything that lives in this reality, that was not in doubt and couldn't change. However, they had been like a wild animal consuming everything they saw with little thought given to the overall strategy of things.

Sure, they had been smart enough not to immediately attack the nearby town and let the Fungal-Floral network consume the forest through its own network of roots and fungi, but they had not given any real thought as to what their approach would be after subjugating the town.

"We know almost nothing about this world, I possess memories but they have been more akin to a drug than actual information that we could use to expand our understanding."

Mar thought out loud as their subordinate collectives busied themselves with the enormous fire spreading through the forest rather than engaging with the musings of the Swarm itself. The collectives were limited even the most advanced among them were administrators rather than thinkers, Mar would need proper generals when the Swarm expanded further. When the enemies she dealt with were more potent than insects and provincial nobles.

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Once Hor had been consumed she would have to change his approach utterly, after all that would be when they were beyond being ignored and hidden within a simple forest. The humans were probably sending out runners and messengers for aid immediately after their leaders returned to the town.

Their first instinct had been to send scouts after the group and pick off the messengers once they had been dispatched, but in the end they had decided against it. Word of her existence would spread one way or another and it would be more convenient that the terrified musings of the locals formed the basis of the narrative, rather than a highly skilled adventurer or some other notable figure.

She was aware of the assumptions that the group had made, humans were loud creatures and sparrows had good hearing. The Swarm had not cared about their assumptions at the time, but the new Mar had more perspective on things than what their rather simple self used to have. Mistakenly the enemy believed them to be an evolved Thrall-Maker Spider, well they were welcome to believe that and Mar would do nothing to change that impression.

But before they turned to accelerate those plans they needed contingencies. Mar was legion but they were still vulnerable, a magical disease or a powerful army could potentially eradicate the Swarm as it was contained here in the forest. So Mar reached out and altered one of the few fish units that they possessed. He could use a new home and a contingency for future events. Mar altered the fish to be able to survive in seawater in addition to fresh water, and made it almost completely translucent to the point that it was almost perfectly invisible.

A contingency plan was needed and this speedy little fish would plant a seed of her in the ocean so that even if all of her in the Forest of Halla was destroyed, the Sovereign Swarm would still live. The next step was to turn their attention to another possibility, which lay in the clearing where the intruders had barely managed to escape her wrath. He knew that the almost liquid webbing of the Juggernaut Spider unlike most spider webs did not burn at all, and one of the humans had practically been cocooned in the stuff.

Somehow, they also knew that the web served as an air filter rather than as a means of strangulation. Cocooned as he was the human would have been able to breathe even through the smoke produced by the inferno, which left Mar with an opportunity there. His old self would have simply infected the man and left him to join the rest of the Fungal Zombies, but that was a short-sighted goal when Mar knew about an alternative option.

For sure they discovered this alternative by accident, but when the fires were dealt with he thought that soon there would be a possibility to add another Subject to her small but hopefully growing collection.