The Emperor’s Angel of Death

After birthing the fertilized eggs, the Arakens would place them in a special nutrient solution. In ancient times, this nutrient solution needed to be secreted by the female Arakens themselves, which consumed a lot of energy, even leading some tribes to develop the habit of eating males to replenish energy. After entering the technological age, this nutrient solution became artificially synthesized, but it required a lot of food.

After two years of incubation, the larval Arakens would be born. At that time, they all looked the same, with soft, worm-like exteriors, and they had to live in humid environments. They also needed to consume a large amount of food every day—they needed to eat nearly 60 times their initial weight in food during their three years of growth, until they grew almost as large as their mothers. During this period, the female Arakens took care of the larvae.

After three years of incubation, the larval Arakens would undergo the most important transformation of their lives. They would turn into a giant cocoon and remain so for a whole year, until they hatched and became semi-adults. Only then did they have gender differences.

Semi-adult Arakens are slightly smaller than adults and have no carapace protection. They need to learn the skills and knowledge they need to live independently under the protection of the tribe for 5-6 years, and ingest a lot of nutrients, and finally grow a carapace to become an adult Araken.

In other words, it takes about 10-12 years for an Araken to go from gestation to adulthood, which is even faster than humans. Compared to their relatively long lifespan, this reproductive efficiency is very high. The only thing that restricts their population is food.

[Writing here, I hope readers will remember our domain name Taiwan Novel Network →𝒕𝒘𝒌𝒂𝒏.𝒄𝒐𝒎】 - I will skip translating this sentence.

It can be seen from the entire breeding process that the food consumed by the Araken's growth is very huge. Although they have been working hard to develop their own agriculture and animal husbandry, after the population reaches a certain number, "eating" is still the biggest and most difficult problem to solve in the entire society. Even technological progress has not been able to alleviate it. Even because the Araken tribe has become more demanding of their offspring, they have formulated a very high standard "growth diet".

Since the Araken tribe is a sterol auxotroph, the most critical elements for its growth and development are selenium and sterols. This is the key to the rapid intellectual development of female Arakens, and the reason why males have super explosive muscles. This high-standard diet has enabled the Araken tribe's population quality to leap forward, and has also brought about an explosive increase in technology, and many excellent female scientists have emerged, but it has also brought great burden to their home planet. Huge automated farms in the form of cooperatives cover every corner of the planet, but they are always in short supply.

Before the T'au invasion, if a female Araken wanted to conceive a batch of offspring, the entire cooperative would have to do its best, and all the females would have to work to the limit to barely meet the requirements. Even if they had the technological capability of space travel, because the star system they were in was relatively barren, the Araken society's food problem was not solved because of entering the space age. The Holy Trinity Council had no choice but to invest limited resources in technology and space aspects, seeking new colonies, but this in turn aggravated the burden on the Araken's lower-level cooperatives, and even because of the heavy breeding tasks, some young female Arakens gave up living in groups and having offspring, choosing to live alone in the nest city. In addition, the breeding cost of males is higher than that of females and they do not participate in production activities, many cooperatives gradually reduced the number of males bred, basically maintaining only one male per litter. This led to when the population of this race expanded to more than 3 billion, the number of males was less than 4 million - which also included one-fifth of semi-adults.

One of the main reasons why the T'au invasion was successful was that the Araken's own society had actually problems - cooperatives disintegrated one after another, the population decreased instead of increasing, many females chose to live alone until death, and males stayed in the religious orders for a long time to hone their martial arts skills and did not ask about world affairs. Finally, when foreign enemies came, the Araken tribe with a population of more than 3 billion had only a mere 3 million battle-ready soldiers, and after eight years of resistance, they could only abandon their homes and escape.

However, food is hardly a problem for the Eldar. In the starting stage of the Araken's resettlement, the Royal Court will provide them with high-quality food and the nutrient solution needed for incubation. They only need to concentrate on restoring the number of their population. After they reach a certain scale, they can be granted more efficient agricultural technology and food synthesis technology. In fact, the Arakens themselves also have some unique technologies, and their requirements for the environment are not high. They can develop in extremely cold or hot environments, but they have higher requirements for oxygen, that is, the atmosphere. And terraforming planetary atmospheres is just a piece of cake for Ark Eldar, let alone the Royal Court.

So for three star systems, Soshyant is very confident that he can "use" them all.

After a moment of silence,铵'恪(铵'恪: A'n'Ke) said slowly:

"This condition is difficult for us to accept. Sha'dragg and Hou'sann both had our colonies. Although they were destroyed by the Zerg, the great Fire Clan commander Shas'I'Volka led the hunter-killer guerrilla warfare in Sha'dragg for sixty days, and the last defenders of Hou'sann held out in an abandoned mine for one hundred days. They have become a symbol of the 克'珊(克'珊: K'San)'s indomitable spirit. If they are handed over to you, the people of 克'珊(克'珊: K'San) cannot accept it emotionally."

"So, you plan to refuse?"

"You can change a condition. Those two star systems have been severely damaged by the Zerg and will not bring you any meaning."

Soshyant looked at the other party, and after a while, nodded slightly.

"Alright, if I really want it, the Arakens will take it themselves. I won't take it for them personally, but as a price, you will provide the Arakens with the food they need as compensation. The term is 30 years, the amount for the first year is 4 billion tons, and then it will increase by 5% every year."

Even with A'n'Ke's good temper, he subconsciously clenched the Honor Blade in his hand.

This is to have the people of K'San use their sweat to feed their future enemies!

A'n'Ke calmed his anger and nodded.

"Okay."

"Then, the rest is about the compensation issue. I have written the numbers on it. Do you have any ideas here?"

It's not that A'n'Ke had no ideas, but that he wanted to faint. This was almost an astronomical figure. Even if the K'San family had a good industrial base, such a huge number would be enough to drain all their strategic reserves.

"Phoenix King Your Highness, I don't understand, your weapons are obviously more advanced than ours, why do you need these?"

"For the vassal races to use. The Eldar's weapons are not very useful for ordinary races, but your weapons are still decent, mainly because they are very versatile."

"The quantity is too huge, please give us some more time."

Soshyant thought for a while and agreed to the other party's request.

"Then pay it in ten years."