A fierce battle was currently taking place on the world barrier. This battle was hair-raising, to the extent where it could stir up a storm within a range of several light years. However, for ordinary races that did not possess sufficient technological strength, they could not even see what was happening.
The Fallen Apostles needed to enter a physical state from a void state in order to launch a full scale attack on the Imperial Army within the world barrier. Otherwise, the void environment would greatly weaken their weapon systems. This was the advantage of the defending side. However, the Imperial Army similarly had no way of directly striking the Fallen Apostles who were in a void state. We could only exert influence on the Fallen Apostles' field of order at the 'critical point' of the world barrier. This was the disadvantage of the defending side. This type of treacherous battlefield was different from any conventional war. The two warring sides engaged in a life and death struggle on the level of concepts, worldviews, mathematical laws, and even universal constants. The only goal was to destroy the environment of order that the enemy relied on to survive and disrupt the enemy's deployment, causing them to collapse uncontrollably into the real world. On this indescribable battlefield, conventional cannons gave way to all kinds of mathematical law generating devices and constant adjusting devices. The warships that were 'destroyed' did not turn into twisted steel fragments from high temperatures and explosions, but rather due to the collapse of the field of order, they were instantly washed away by the void into a pile of basic information elements, just like a hard disk that had passed through a degaussing device.
"The stability of the world barrier has dropped to 80%. Light speed disorder may occur in this region. All fleets, pay attention to adjusting defense modes … Confirming that the speed of light in this region has dropped to 76%. The cosmic background radiation has disappeared, and the gravitational constant is being reset …"
The ship's mainframe broadcast the environmental changes in the region the fleet was in. Right now, our main force was still quietly hovering in space, located approximately 1.3 light years away from a dark nebula. The distant space appeared slightly smoky red, a lingering light and heat released by an aging nebula after exhausting the raw materials that could produce stars. I turned the surveillance camera's focus to that dark red dust belt. It was extremely thin, the material at the edge of the dark nebula. Currently, it looked normal, but the superluminal observation equipment showed that the spectrum coming from the edge of the nebula was changing. The disorder of the speed of light had already caused space wonders to appear in this region of space, such as colorful interstellar dust belts that looked like oil on the surface of water — erroneous red and blue shifts.
Before the enemy's fleet could enter this world, our vanguard took advantage of the moment the enemy was distracted to charge towards the world barrier and rewrite the world barrier's entry code. Now, the Fallen Apostles had no choice but to reset their order generator to reclaim the right to enter the barrier, and their intense confrontation at the barrier's' critical point 'had weakened the universe's defense system, allowing the void to affect the universe of order inside through the barrier's weak point. This was the reason for the space wonders before our eyes.
During the struggle to enter the world barrier's entry code, the Fallen Apostles' spaceships began to show battle damage. Our army dropped a large number of orderly field disruptors into the void, and these disruptors could temporarily shut down the mathematical equipment within range. For void spaceships that relied on the orderly field to protect themselves, the shutdown of the mathematical equipment meant that a hole would appear in their orderly field. For example, if an object was born in a universe where one plus one equals two, then it would need a set of mathematical equipment in the void to continuously produce an orderly environment where one plus one equals two. This process was similar to running code on a bare machine without any OS system. You would need to write your own lowest level environment language in order for your code to survive, and the shutdown of the mathematical equipment meant that the environment language would become ineffective. The void — a bare machine without any OS interface would not support advanced code, and naturally would not allow objects from the material world to survive inside. When one plus one did not equal two, the spaceships from the material world would be erased by the void in an extremely short period of time.
This was the reason why the Fallen Apostles were currently facing the largest scale of battle damage.
Of course, the enemy had the same level of technology as us, and they would not just sit and wait for death. When the Imperial Army's special combat spaceships turned the world barrier into a firewall, not only did the Fallen Apostles quickly recover from those annoying phantoms, they also began to forcefully "sink" into the material world. Their orderly field clashed violently with the world barrier, just like installing a 64-bit software into a 32-bit operating system and requiring it to run normally. This was a confrontation on the level of "worldviews." The enemy had forcefully charged through the barrier without analyzing the current universe's entry frequency, using another set of universal constants to destroy the current world's basic laws. This was a barbaric and violent method, and the destruction it caused to the world was fatal. It would cause the universal constants to become unbalanced in a relatively large area, and even cause the universe's lifespan to rapidly shorten. If it triggered a dimensional collapse effect, it might even lead to the end of the world. However, the Fallen Apostles did not care. They no longer had the sense of responsibility that the old Empire had back then. As long as they could obtain victory, they did not mind destroying this universe.
"Looks like placing the battlefield here was a wise move," the elder sister said to herself. Her gaze fell on the giant holographic projection in the center of the command hall, which displayed the real scene of space outside the fleet.
It looked like we were the only ones on this battlefield, and the enemy had yet to show themselves. However, in reality, the battle had already begun and had reached its climax.
They were right outside this universe, desperately trying to squeeze their way in. Now, their forceful charging through the world barrier had already caused rather obvious consequences in the universe. There were not many phenomena that could be observed visually, but the most obvious was that the space where the fleet was located was currently filled with a dim glow. Because the universal constants had been destroyed, the direction of light and the axis of time had already been messed up. The system showed that the fleet was currently being illuminated by a beam of sunlight that came from hundreds of millions of years ago. In theory, this beam of sunlight should have already left this space hundreds of millions of years ago.
What was even more serious than the abnormal phenomena that could be seen visually was the error in the universal constants that were detected by the various detection devices. The gravitational constant over a large area had now become erratic, and the law of universal gravitation appeared to be in discontinuous effect over a range of several light years. I was thankful that there were no celestial bodies here, or it would have been torn into pieces by itself. The dark nebula that stretched for tens of thousands of light years right next to the Empire's fleet was also disturbed. It was torn apart by the erratic gravity, and like a leaking balloon, it was slowly extending a thin jet of matter towards our direction. The stability of space had dropped to a critical value a few minutes ago, and now a few spatial bombs would definitely create a wormhole over a large area. The fundamental force that ensured the stability of matter had not changed for the moment, but the precision detectors showed that the effect of the strong mutual force had dropped by one ten-thousandth within the affected area. It was a rather precise value, and the slightest ripple could cause all things in the world to crumble into elementary particles, and one ten-thousandth of a ripple was the limit that the universe could withstand.
"The enemy is about to break through the defense line on the World Barrier," Xi Wei suddenly reported. "Their orderly field has already fused more than half with the World Barrier, and our special combat spaceships are being pulled out one by one."
"Let them retreat," Xiaoxue said decisively. "The enemy's follow-up troops will arrive in twenty minutes. Charge the main cannons, and let their vanguard suffer a little before more of the enemy arrive. "
In a daze, I seemed to see Sandora's shadow in Xiaoxue. Perhaps this child had been brought up by Sandora for a period of time back then?
Special combat spaceships were usually high-end warships modified from small to medium-sized warships that were below the expeditionary grade, and were specially used to fight on special battlefields such as the World Barrier. They had high-tech orderly equipment and mathematical weapons, but after entering the Universe of Order, these equipment would be affected by the revision of their worldview. At the same time, these spaceships could not be equipped with too many conventional weapons, so they were unusually weak against the Fallen Apostles who were about to break through the World Barrier. When the Fallen Apostles successfully found a stable information point on the World Barrier, their weapons regained their combat power, and the weaker special combat spaceships immediately suffered damage. If this continued, the advantage we had gained through our surprise attack would soon be lost, so Xiaoxue immediately gave the order to abandon the World Barrier.
A few seconds later, the mainframe of the spaceship let out a piercing alarm. "Large-scale mass body detected entering this universe! The hole in the World Barrier is expanding! "
"Second and third echelons, stand by and await the Prophet's instructions." I looked at Rena and Odemsius' silhouettes on the communicator. "Where are you now?"
"Outside the World Barrier, at the boundary between the Void and the World of Order." Odemsius' body was surrounded by the radiance of magic power, and he looked like a god. "We are currently following the enemy's troops into the real world. The Fallen Apostles were deceived by the illusion, so they did not expect us to be together with the illusion. They have not discovered us yet."
Odemsius and Rena had led the Spellcasters to carry out a very risky mission. Not only had they cooperated with the Leader Bee to cast a large-scale mirage next to the Fallen Apostles, they had actually brought their troops and the illusion to the side of the enemy!
Of course, while they were concealing their tracks, they had also used the illusion to divert the enemy's attention elsewhere to reduce the chances of them being hit by stray bullets, but it was still rather dangerous. The Fallen Apostles' counterattack after being attacked by the illusion was unpredictable. The Spellcasters standing together with the illusion fleet, which was already a target, was equivalent to gambling with the enemy's guns and cannons. However, everything was developing according to plan. After the Fallen Apostles realized that they were facing some shadows, they immediately diverted their attacks. Odemsius and Rena led the Spellcasters to brazenly 'hide' next to the enemy's position.
The illusion still did not disappear. As the Fallen Apostles gradually sank into the real world, the former followed closely behind and even 'attacked' them all the way. However, the enemy had already determined that the illusion was something the Imperial Army used to disrupt their judgment and divert their firepower. They completely ignored these shadows that had zero attack power, and did not waste any firepower to clean up the battlefield. After all, to the Schilling starships that had high-efficiency lock-on devices, as long as the shadows that were randomly moving around on the battlefield were marked, they would not cause any more harm. The Shiring Apostles would not be like the armies of ordinary races, and would not be disturbed by the identified shadows.
Now, the enemy chose to use the fleet's firepower control mainframe and lock-on system to eliminate those 'shadows' instead of diverting a portion of their firepower to the latter. Logically speaking, this would be a wise decision, but this time, it became another mistake on the enemy's part.
Odemsius and Rena led tens of thousands of carefully selected Spellcasters and quietly hid in the illusion that had been completely ignored by the Fallen Apostles. Under the cover of those colorful but powerless' warships', they waited to launch a truly powerful attack at any time.
The stability of space fell to a tolerable limit, and the barrier between the world and the Void collapsed with a loud bang. Following that, a large number of densely packed red marks appeared on all the firepower control radars.
"The enemy's vanguard has been confirmed to be a high-speed force field towing ship. Our warp disruptor has been eliminated!"
"The special forces have safely retreated. The damaged warships are being urgently repaired."
"Hidden Bombardment Formation, standby. Ready to attack at any time!"
The command hall immediately became busy.
"Don't worry about the warp disruptor. This method won't work every time." The power of Storm Commander had already spread throughout the entire fleet, and the firepower and attack speed of the Imperial Army kept increasing. She ordered the abandonment of the ineffective disruptors, and then silently counted down to six seconds, waiting for the Fallen Apostle's fleet to enter its most vulnerable state. Then, she ordered, "All troops, fire freely! Deploy the stealth bombing ships from the flank — three echelons, cover! "
"Servant fleet, cover the second wave of stealth bombing ships from the fleet, and delay the counterattack firepower from the enemy's flank!"
The cold and silent universe was instantly ignited by the blazing cannon fire. The two warring parties were still half a light year away from each other, but they had already begun to bombard each other from afar through all kinds of extra-dimensional firepower projection devices. The Fallen Apostles seemed to have long known that the Imperial Army was used to deploying warp disruptors when the enemy was in the middle of a warp to cause great damage. The first batch of warships that jumped out were small spaceships known as high-speed force field towing ships. These things did not have much firepower, but they possessed extremely high warp stability. After facing the Imperial Army's firepower and paying a huge price, they completely destroyed the warp disruptors we had deployed to the mass collapse point. The main force of the enemy entered the battlefield almost unscathed from the first wave of attack, and then launched a fierce counterattack.
It seemed that we were not the only ones who had improved through the battle.
If you were in space, there was no such thing as terrain to rely on. If both sides were using the same equipment, there was no such thing as a difference in technology. If both sides had similar combat strength and numbers, if the frontline commanders of the warring parties were all extremely experienced veterans who had fought in wars for tens of millions of years, and they had almost mastered the art of smashing the enemy's brains out to the point of almost being an art. They even knew each other's habit of blowing each other's brains out. Then, this was a situation where both sides were evenly matched. Of course, this was a more elegant way of putting it. In layman's terms, it would be: two groups of people staring at each other.
Now, the warring parties had entered a macroscopic phase of sparring. The reason why it was a macroscopic phase of sparring was that there were still many things that could be done outside of the main battlefield. Our side was called a strategy, and the enemy was called a despicable one. In any case, it was just taking advantage of each other at the edge of the main battlefield to achieve additional results. When the Imperial Army's stealth bombardment ships left their formation under the cover of a large number of escorts and rushed towards the enemy's rear, the enemy's hyperspace strikes also began to pour down firepower on the expeditionary battleships on the flanks of the Imperial Army. The commander of the Fallen Apostle this time seemed to be someone who did not take the usual path. After suffering additional losses in the void ambush, he began to adopt a series of unconventional tactics, such as using the rapid force field towing ships to eliminate the warp disruptor, or directing half of the firepower towards the flanks of the Imperial Army. These unusual tactics were indeed effective. Now, the enemy was slowly expanding their results. It was not enough to make up for the losses they had suffered in the void ambush, but they were beginning to stabilize their position.
In the command hall of the Admiral of the Empire, the ship's mainframe was urgently broadcasting the damage control information from the flanks, as well as the battle report from the frontline commander with an emergency index of more than 8.5. The expeditionary battleships, which served as auxiliary firepower platforms, were now heavily damaged and had no choice but to shrink their formation. The Imperial Army's formation was in good shape, but the enemy's vanguard consisted of a large number of frontier-class fortress ships, which formed a combined shield that made their defense as sturdy as a tortoise's shell. Sives ordered a portion of the fleet that was covering the return of the stealth bombardment ships to make a circle with a radius of 0.3 light years to attract the enemy's firepower. Of course, the servant fleet still had to return as planned, as their ships could not carry out such a mission.
"What a strange tactic. They're ignoring the Imperial Army's main force, but attacking our second line with full force." Sives was perplexed, but Xiaoxue was unconcerned. "It's normal. This vanguard is just clearing the threat for their reinforcements. The enemy's second wave of motherships is huge, and they're suitable to deal with the Imperial Army's main force. Moreover, they're heavily threatened by the small and medium sized heavy firepower ships. Now, the enemy knows that they've suffered great losses in the early stages and can no longer muster enough heavy firepower, so they're doing their best to clear out the ships they can defeat for their allies. "
The warning radar sent out urgent alarms again. This time, it detected a large number of mass collapses forming within a few light seconds of the Imperial Army's position. It could be the enemy's assault force, or it could be a large group of warp warheads, or it could also be a large group of shiny bricks. The enemy commander we encountered this time was really unpredictable, and it didn't seem surprising at all that he could throw at us.
I felt someone tugging at my sleeve, and I knew who it was without turning around. This was based on the height of the person next to me.
"General's guards, get ready to attack," I said to the communications station. "Sicarro, you guys hold off the enemy's heavy firepower, and open up a space for Pandora and her sister to fight."
Just as the two 1.2m men excitedly ran to the teleportation device and prepared to eject, the intelligence officer suddenly reported an unexpected piece of information.
"Your Majesty, we've received a distress signal — from a third party."
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
