By the time Pandora threw the Spatial Implosion Bombs at the size of a football field, the battle had already come to an end.
This was a battle without any suspense. When the Melovans' slave fleet "defected" to disrupt the Imperial Army, their ambush was fully calculated. At the same time, when the Imperial Army's reinforcements arrived from various battlefields, all the advantages and opportunities had fallen into our hands. The enemy's only advantage was their sheer numbers. However, due to Lin Xue's several precise predictions, the Imperial Army had completely separated the Melovans' three fleets into three different areas of the battlefield. They were unable to deploy a strong enough combined shield, and in the end, under the unprecedentedly intense firepower bombardment of the Imperial Army, the enemy's fleet was almost completely wiped out. Now, only a small portion of the enemy's fleet was stubbornly resisting on the battlefield. This was a group of elite Commander-class aircraft carriers. Their escort fleet had already suffered heavy damage and had almost lost their combat power. Now, the only remaining Commander-class aircraft carriers were deploying all their drones to barely resist the wolf-like assault force of the Empire. However, the defeat of these enemy ships was only a matter of time.
"These small aircrafts are very annoying." When the battle calmed down and the command center finally calmed down from its busy state, I looked at the images from the spy probes at the frontline and turned to Lin Xue. "It seems that half of them were directly recycled from scrap metal during the battle. Look, some of them don't even have any paint on them."
"These are called Commander-class aircraft carriers …" Lin Xue recalled the information we had on hand. "The aircraft carriers of those small aircrafts. Their name is quite awe-inspiring, but they are indeed quite powerful … Fortunately, we have air defense frigates that specialize in dealing with these small aircrafts. "
We were talking about the Melovans' main ship: the Commander-class aircraft carrier. It was an oval-shaped spaceship that was one-third smaller than an Eternal-class one. Its round appearance looked like a pale gold slender seed, even though the seed was quite large. Apart from the main cannons at the bow and on both sides of the spaceship, the majority of the spaceship were ejection channels hidden under the armor plates. Whenever the semi-circular ejection channels opened, a swarm of golden drones would swarm out. These small aircrafts were about the size of a private car and had a diamond-like polyhedron structure. They did not have much firepower, and it often took a dozen or even dozens of drones to focus fire against a single Schilling single-soldier fighter. However, they were all equipped with powerful self-destruct devices. These small aircrafts were very agile, and their most common tactic was to swarm hundreds of them into a spherical formation, spraying all their firepower while crashing into the larger enemy ships, and then self-destruct. Due to the large number of aircrafts, they protected each other. Conventional anti-aircraft cannons and interceptors could only brush off these spherical formations layer by layer, but it was difficult to destroy the few self-destructs at the core. Therefore, they really posed a serious threat to the Empire fleet at the beginning. I believe that this extreme fighting style must have been learned by the Melovans in the old Empire era. In that era, when the old Empire was fighting for the old Empire, every servant army would do anything to increase their offensive capabilities in order to get more attention. Their conventional weapons could never match up to the galaxy, so they often chose the simplest and crudest weapon with the most obvious improvement: high-yield self-destruct. The technology was simple, fast, accurate, and unprecedentedly powerful, and it was deeply appreciated by the masters of the old Empire. As a veteran servant army, the Melovans were proficient in this aspect, and they even simply turned the self-destruct fighters into regular firepower like the main cannons of the ships. When dozens or hundreds of these things self-destruct together, the psionic bombs carried inside could even produce the same power as the medium warp missiles of the Empire, and many of our small and medium-sized ships were sunk by such sudden self-destruct.
Even so, the Melovans' Commander-class carriers were still powerless against the Eternal-class motherships of the Empire. The latter's ships were sturdy, their cannons powerful, their powerful shield system, and the surrounding Bordership-class guard formations were simply unafraid of such attacks. The damage to the Eternal-class shields from a single self-destruction of a fleet of self-destruct fighters would not even be as great as the damage from a shield refresh. Moreover, the Eternal-class armor plates were filled with anti-air cannons and interceptors. As a classic 'insane + mobile cannons' flagship, the Eternal-class lacked powerful secondary cannons and was lacking in agility, which was why they needed the means to actively protect themselves in the face of concentrated, advancing enemies. The protection of an Eternal-class mothership mainly came from two points. The first was its escort fleet. Each Eternal-class mothership would often be paired with three to six Bordership-class fortresses to provide additional combined shields, as well as an equal number of expeditionary starships to supplement its lack of medium firepower. The second was the large number of anti-air cannons on its body. Regular Eternal-class models usually had a long axis of seventy to eighty kilometers, while special models could reach up to a hundred kilometers. Such a wide surface area meant that they not only had a higher chance of hitting the target (there's no helping it. Motherships are huge targets, and I don't believe a hundred-kilometer-long thing would dare to use mobile defense), but they also had large anti-air cannons. If you put that thing horizontally on Earth, it could lie down from Beijing to Tianjin — just imagine how many anti-air cannons there would be along the way. As a mothership that could not install more secondary cannons, the Eternal-class reactor was used to power the galaxy and support the shield, while the rest was used to maintain the all-encompassing anti-air cannons …
As long as the Melovans' self-destruct fighters flew past the Eternal-class, they would basically drift away in the form of dust. Moreover, we had a large number of anti-air corvettes specifically designed to deal with the grey fighters. After the Melovans' Commander-class carriers achieved some results against the small and medium-sized warships of the Imperial Army, they were soon completely suppressed.
Sometimes, the difference in quality could not be made up for with quantity.
Even so, while the Commander class carriers were only average in combat against the Imperial Army, I could tell that they were warships very suitable for the servant army.
They used the 'milder' weak psionic energy — although it would be considered inferior psionic energy in the eyes of the Empire's technicians. That allowed the Commander class carriers to not have specific high-radiation zones like most Empire starships, and normal races could also work in such ships for long periods without worrying about contracting the lethal psionic radiation crystallization syndrome. The latter was a new radiation sickness that appeared among the servant army: carbon-based and most silicon-based lifeforms exposed to psionic energy for a long time would develop body lesions, and parts of their body structure would deteriorate like psionic crystals due to the broad-spectrum erosion of psionic energy. Of course, as soon as the disease appeared, the crazy experimenters in the research center found a cure, and the disease did not cause any harm. However, this situation still greatly weakened the combat power of the slave army, and no matter what, the radiation disease was a very disappointing thing. Now, the Melovans' Commander-class warships gave me some inspiration: they were a bunch of fellows who had been following the Shiring Apostles since the age of the Old Empire, and they had a lot of 'experience' in the 'profession' of the servant army. Their ships appeared to be specially designed for normal races, with low radiation to ensure sufficient power. Moreover, it was clear that they could keep up with the battle rhythm of the Empire warships, and perhaps the Melovans had even designed more efficient combat support AI to make up for the lack of thinking speed of normal races. Now, the Imperial Army Command was still organizing a bunch of experts and scholars to study the balance between the physical endurance of normal races and the equipment of the Empire all day long. In order to come up with the technical standards manual that was said to add up to several Gs, they were beaten black and blue every day. Now, they should be able to save up on that. Wasn't there a bunch of ready-made standards in front of them? The Melovans had been studying for tens of thousands of years so that they, as a normal race, could use the most powerful psionic energy equipment possible …
I smiled in satisfaction at the thought. I believed that Turazzo must have a lot of technical information in his hands, and it seemed that the old man still had a lot of potential value. I was glad that I had stopped Pandora in time, or else if the 1.2 meter tall girl had gone berserk and destroyed Turazzo, even Jingle wouldn't have been able to save the situation.
"Your smile is very perverted." Lin Xue looked at me silently. "I have already taken a picture of you and posted it on Weibo …"
I was speechless.
Not stopping the establishment of XL Media back then was my biggest mistake in the planning of the City of Shadows!
At that moment, the last of the Melovans' fleets finally collapsed under the cannon fire of the Imperial Army. Their last Commander Class Carrier was blasted into two right in the middle by a heavy assault ship. The broken wreckage of the ship quickly disintegrated in the violent explosion, and the thick smoke spread into a huge sphere. Under the impetus of the Silver Heart's chaotic jet of matter, the wreckage and the other ship wreckage took the same path: to become a part of the long river of matter released from the center of the galaxy, gradually being pushed away from this crazy place in the process of disintegration. At the edge of the battlefield, the remaining Melovans' escape ships were futilely fleeing into the distance. Theoretically, it was impossible for them to escape from this place.
The battlefield had been locked down, and the entire center of the galaxy was under the surveillance of a high-precision enemy detection system. Any ship that tried to escape from this battlefield would be sniped by the super dimensional cannons. The small escape ships wouldn't be able to withstand even the weakest of cannons.
However, we had other plans. These escape ships had to escape back alive, along with the 'little gift' that Sandora had prepared for them.
"Bring the two of them here," Lin Xue ordered. Soon, the gate of the command hall opened, and several Schilling's soldiers escorted two haggard Melovans to us. "The prisoners of war have been delivered, Sir!"
I nodded and looked at the two pale Melovans. These were two 'old friends'. If they could still think, their memories of their life in the fourth zone would still be fresh. Yes, these were the two Melovans that we had captured previously. It could be said that these two were the start of everything. It was through these two that we had found the Melovans' territory, and now, it was also through these two that we continued to add fuel to the Melovans' journey of destruction. Needless to say, the two prisoners of war before us probably didn't have the intelligence to answer any questions. They looked haggard and exhausted, as though they would faint at any moment. However, this state wasn't due to any abuse, but because they had been tied to the bow of this flagship for the past forty-eight hours.
Yes, they had been tied to the gigantic mind control amplifier … They had even been directly embedded in the resonance crystal for two whole days and two nights. Sandora's soul power had continuously washed over, modified, and twisted the wills of these two mortals. Now, the core of their souls as humans had completely disintegrated. Other than their physical bodies, their mental worlds were empty. All that was left was the soul power that Sandora had 'planted' in their souls.
Shallow Shallow waved her hand in front of the two prisoners of war curiously, but the latter didn't react at all, as though they were marionettes.
"Ah Jun, the contamination that Sandora mentioned … is it really that powerful?"
"I absolutely believe it." I nodded with lingering fear in my heart. I recalled the experiment that we had conducted on the other Melovans when these two prisoners of war were halfway modified. The latter had merely exchanged a glance with these two 'contamination', and they were immediately corrupted. In just a few short hours, they had chosen to commit suicide out of fear and despair for no reason. After that, we felt that this kind of spiritual contamination took effect too quickly, making it easy for the Melovans to notice it and isolate it. That was why we carried out a day of modification to slow down the rate of contamination. Now that two days of modification had passed, these two Melovans had become the perfect source of the spiritual plague.
"Lass, I'll leave it to you." I patted Shallow Shallow's head, stopping her from knocking on the bodies of the two prisoners of war who had already become living dead. "Based on the information provided by Turazzo, we have already marked out the escape ships of the enemy from the 'Godly Kingdom' for you."
"Oh." Shallow Shallow nodded confidently. In an instant, the aura around her changed. "Other than those escape ships, can you kill the rest of them?"
I nodded blankly. "… Do as you see fit."
When the Queen of Time's power spread, the entire battlefield seemed to have fallen into a quagmire. Everything gradually froze as if in slow motion. Finally, the chaotic zone that was filled with wreckage became a solidified bubble in the center of the galaxy. The Melovans' escape ships that were about to escape from the battlefield were set on the last step of their escape. Meanwhile, Shallow Shallow brought the two 'gifts' to one of the escape ships.
We, who were the only ones outside of the time stop, watched the strange scene before us. Shallow Shallow's power always gave people the illusion that reality and fantasy were fusing. We saw Qian Qian's shuttle flash by, and then the Merovans' ships seemed to have regained their vigor and began to accelerate again. They scattered in all directions, running at full speed. In the eyes of the deserters, their escape ships might have been moving so fast that they were about to surpass the speed of light in the blink of an eye. But in our eyes, those ships were ridiculously slow, and even the flames around them were slowly spreading. Then, a large number of Melovans' escape ships began to split, decay, disintegrate, and even slowly disappear like phantoms. By the time Shallow Shallow returned to the command center, 90% of the Melovans' escape ships had become fragments and faint phantoms scattered across the universe. Time flowed once again in that instant. The dismembered escape ships turned into fragments that shot towards the depths of the universe. Only a few small ships managed to escape, and Sandora's gift was on one of those ships.
"What's with those spaceships that disappeared into thin air?"
I turned to ask Shallow Shallow curiously. She had just recovered from battle and was looking gloomy. It seemed that the dark version of her must have done a lot of challenging things at the edge of the battlefield.
"I cut off part of their timeline, and then they were dismembered into countless parts and sent to different time periods from the birth of this world," Shallow Shallow explained. "For example, their heads were in the Big Bang, their arms in the Neolithic Age, and their legs in … Ugh … Ah Jun, I'm a little disgusted …"
I was speechless. This lady's two personalities would probably never be able to be unified in this lifetime.
"I really hope that Barrian can personally meet with the two sources of the plague," Lin Xue said. "That would probably save us a lot of trouble."
"I don't think that's possible. At this critical juncture, Barrian wouldn't have the time to ask two stupid soldiers that he picked up from the battlefield." I shook my head. "Furthermore, the mental plague might not be able to infect people of Barrian's level. The Melovans have also received technological modifications from the Empire, especially leaders like Turazzo and Barrian. Their willpower must be extremely strong, so they might not be infected."
The service team began to clean up the battlefield, retrieving the spaceships that still had the value of major repairs. They also collected the wreckage of the Melovans' spaceships. Although these things weren't technologically advanced, they had a certain amount of research value. For example, they could be used to analyze the fighting style and direction of modification of the old Empire's servant army. The research team should be satisfied with these things. We prepared to lead the main force back to the edge of the Milky Way.
The space tunnel had already been established. I turned back to look at the large group of 'new friends' following behind the Empire's fleet.
"Bring these spaceships back first …" Missy snapped her fingers. "Although I don't know how they can be of help, we can't just leave them alone since we've already saved them. There is a lot of space outside Planet General."
The slave fleet was still in a daze. Now, it was Sandora who was using mental hints to tell them what to do. These slaves might know that they had already obtained their freedom, but they didn't know how it came about. They also didn't know the background of the person who gave them their freedom. In fact … they might not even understand the meaning of freedom. These people had been enslaved for many generations. There probably weren't many of them left who still remembered the taste of freedom. After bringing them back, we still had a lot of work to do. One of them was …
It was probably to give these slave soldiers a lesson on science.
The next thing to consider was to get Turazzo to start his plan to cross worlds as soon as possible.
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