In the bridge command hall of the Empire Admiral, the warning of system overload was sounding more and more urgent. Red warning flashes were flashing on 80% of the information terminals. The mainframe of the ship was operating at full capacity, and the rapid reports from the commanders and the sharing of information through the mental link filled the vast command center. Everything pointed to one fact: the battle situation was deteriorating.
The outer barrier of this space had actually been reset, and it was done by the Fallen Apostle. This incomprehensible situation immediately stopped our reinforcements. From the very beginning, the main force of the imperial fleet and a large number of servant fleets were ordered to dock outside this ruined world. We had built a base in the void domain close to this world, and most of the fleets were docked in this base. When the battle broke out, PL-15, who was in the ruins, immediately teleported his first and second fleets of the Vengeance Fleet over. Half of the Royal Fleet and a portion of the Empire's regular army also teleported over. However, no one expected that just as more imperial fleets were about to enter the battlefield, the dimension would suddenly be sealed.
As we mentioned at the beginning, the ruined world was a very strange dimension. It had a layer of grid-like membrane outside, and this membrane separated the Order inside from the Void outside. We had passed through this membrane to enter this dimension. At the time, this membrane was like nothing to the Empire ships. Even though its structure was mysterious, there was no evidence that it could interfere with Schilling Technology's navigation equipment. However, just a few minutes ago, the nature of this membrane changed, and the Empire Fleet outside the ruined world could no longer locate any coordinates on the other side of the membrane. They tried to force their way into this world, but after a series of system errors, they were sent to random locations in the Void. There was only one explanation for this, and that was the Fallen Apostle's doing. No one knew what method they used to seal this world.
And yet, they could still enter easily.
"Damage to energy leeches has reached 40%. Combined Shield resistance has decreased."
The mainframe of the ship issued a cold, emotionless notification. Then, we felt a faint tremor under our feet. This time, the energy leeches installed near the bridge of the flagship had been destroyed. Several large holographic projections showed the huge explosion outside. A large hole with a radius of about a kilometer had appeared on the Combined Shield. The hole disappeared in a flash, but the Abyssal Torrent that came from the hole still rushed into the formation, brushing past the main cannon of an Eternal-class Mothership and flying deep into space. The Mothership's fully charged main cannon almost lost control. Even though the latter managed to stop, it had no choice but to retreat from the battlefield. Its main cannon's energy restraining device had collapsed, and it could no longer fight.
"Alright, the shield has been pierced again. Even though it has been repaired, our energy leeches are all gone if this goes on."
I looked at the battle damage report in front of me. The most eye-catching and easy to understand was how many energy leeches our army had just lost. This number was alarming, and it succeeded in making me anxious.
"They have found a way to deal with the energy leeches," Sandora said calmly, her eyes sharp.
After discovering the existence of the strange equipment like the energy leeches, the enemy gave up on trying to quickly deplete the Combined Shield by bombarding the entire Empire's fleet from all directions. Instead, they began to concentrate their space-time artillery attacks from 0.5 light years away. The Fallen Apostle's intention was obvious. They had decided to make a hole in the Combined Shield to overload the energy leeches. Even though the principle of the energy leeches was one of the top secrets of the Empire, this kind of energy flux equipment had similar weaknesses. If too much energy was absorbed in an instant, the entire system would be overloaded, and the chain reaction would burn all the online energy leeches to ashes.
As for the piercing of the Combined Shield, this was not a fatal threat. The Combined Shield was not supported by a single shield generator, and the diffusing shield was not an energy flux equipment. It would only overload when a large area was hit. If only one point was pierced, the shield would not suffer much damage as the generator could repair the hole in a thousandth of a second. With a powerful battlefield command ship like the Empire Admiral, the repair speed would be even faster. Thus, the damage caused by the Fallen Apostle's concentrated firepower to the Combined Shield was far less than the overload of the energy leeches.
The enemy was very smart. They had already realized that the new equipment in the Empire's fleet was the most difficult to deal with. In order to make this equipment, which was constantly robbing their energy and using it to 'feed' the main cannon of the Empire fleet, lose its effect, they did not hesitate to temporarily give up their advantage of besieging and attack one point of the Combined Shield, even though this would waste fifty to sixty percent of their firepower.
"The only thing to be thankful for is that Sicarro succeeded."
The big sister placed her hands on the guardrail in front of the officer's platform and said in a low voice.
Five minutes ago, Sicarro led his coarse-skinned and thick-skinned brothers to complete an amazing support. Just a few dozen Borderland-class fortress ships withstood the enemy's concentrated artillery fire and safely rescued the lone transport fleet. They used the special shield system components on their ships to create an extremely compatible Combined Shield and used this shield to wrap the target fleet and rendezvous with the main force of the Imperial Army. This process was like the fusion of two cells. Obviously, this process not only required the quality of the ship's hardware, but it also tested the captain's and all levels of pilots' horrifying proficiency in shield technology. Ordinary pilots, even if they were veterans of the Empire, would not dare to drive a ship to dock with a Combined Shield that was suffering from saturation bombardment, but Sicarro and his officers and soldiers did it.
"Actually, he is a dual expert in shield technology and armor technology." Sandora sighed deeply. "Just take it seriously …"
"Boss, we found something!"
Just as we were conflicted over whether or not to believe that Sicarro was actually an expert in operating shields, an urgent message suddenly came through our information link. Judging from the unique title, it was Sicarro.
After all, we were on the battlefield. Even a bastard like Sicarro knew what he should do at the critical moment. When he rushed out to rescue the transport fleet, he seemed to notice something unusual on the battlefield.
"Here, we took some pictures when we circled to the back of the first ruined planet!"
Sicarro's square-shaped knight face appeared on the officer platform's communicator. He, who appeared as a battlefield commander, looked like an iron-blooded soldier at the moment. The shape of his face looked like the A of a diamond. He sent a series of high-definition holographic images. It was the ruined planet that was in the final stages of splitting. The camera angle was the back of the planet.
After the battle began, everyone's attention was focused on dealing with the enemy's attacks. No one paid attention to the gradually splitting planet because all the refugees had already evacuated. If it wasn't for Sicarro's vigilance and intuition, which he had cultivated over the years, perhaps we wouldn't have noticed this thing. Speaking of which, where did his vigilance and intuition come from? We shouldn't investigate further.
"That is the planet's core."
Artillery fire was still roaring on the battlefield, but we temporarily turned our attention to the image sent by Sicarro. Sandora looked at the dark red light in the image and made a judgment.
The outer layer of the ruined planet had been completely stripped away, turning into a pile of broken spaceships floating in space. The towns and machines that the ruined tribes had built on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years hung on these broken spaceships. It was like a piece of scrap metal covered in rust. After these fragments scattered away, the planet's core could already be clearly seen. It was surrounded by a large, distorted frame. The latter was slowly evaporating under the energy emitted by the core. The core itself floated with an uncomfortable dark red light. Through a simple analysis, the ship's scanner found out that it was a layer of ultra-high temperature "vapor solution" mixed with psionic energy and plasma flames. Free elementary particles moved rapidly under the stimulation of the ultra-high density energy field, forming light radiation and heat radiation. It presented a sensory state between liquid and gas.
This layer of dark red "vapor solution" was not thick, only a few hundred meters thick. It enveloped the core of the ruined planet. Through the flowing light curtain, we could see that the bottom layer was a smooth metal layer. The core of the ruined planet seemed to be an alloy spherical shell with a diameter of several hundred kilometers.
This spherical shell was not completely sealed. It had a huge hole on it. The diameter of this hole was more than 20 kilometers after scanning and measuring, almost enough for an Eternal-class starship to enter directly. Near this hole, there were many huge alloy pipes that had been broken into several pieces. The narrowest of them was similar to the diameter of the hole. It seemed that it should have been connected to the planet's core. Looking at the cross-section of these huge pipes, we found a complex mechanical structure and conduction system. Bright energy sparks jumped in the broken stubble of these damaged facilities, constantly illuminating the flat inner wall of the pipe.
The last image was taken by the Admiral of the Empire. It was a large piece of wreckage that had drifted away from the ruined planet. Its bottom was connected to the thickest alloy pipe, and the top was a vaguely recognizable thing: the big city.
The circle of almost vertical walls around the big city turned out to be the opening of this passage, and the big city itself was built on the entrance of this passage. The purpose of the church building this city was to guard the entrance of the Sacred Vault.
All signs showed that the core was carefully designed and placed there.
"That is the so-called Sacred Vault?" Big Sis looked curiously at the metal sphere wrapped in red light in the middle of the image, and then looked at Visca. "What did you put there back then? You don't remember anything? "
Visca pouted and said dejectedly, "I only remember that it was something important at the time, but I can't remember anything else."
"It seems to be open now."
Sandora said softly. "The Union Shield has shrunk a lot, and there is no way to protect the core in the safety zone. If we want to go over … it will be very risky. We will need to travel at least 150,000 kilometers without the protection of the Union Shield under the artillery fire. "
"But I have a premonition that it is very important," I said. At the same time, there was another violent tremor under my feet, and I almost lost my balance. "Xue lass, what do you think?"
Lin Xue stood beside us without saying a word, and didn't give any hints. But now, I felt that it was necessary for the prophet to say a few words. The current situation was undoubtedly dangerous, but Lin Xue didn't have any reaction. Did she see a turning point?
"If I must say … Actually, we don't need to take action. It will fall into our hands." Lin Xue rubbed her forehead, looking tired. "I'm sorry, today's situation is slightly different from what I predicted … Wait, turn all firepower! Aim at the planet's core. The enemy is going to launch a surprise attack here! "
Even though the order was sudden, Lin Xue's orders had the highest priority in such a situation. The fleet's fire control system immediately responded to the order to reset the firing angle. A few seconds after Lin Xue's voice trailed off, the ship's mainframe let out an ear-piercing alarm. The synthesized electronic voice began to urgently broadcast, "Warning! The gravitational trap equipment has been disrupted. Gravitational collapse detected at the edge of the defense line! Gravitational collapse at the edge of the defense line! The enemy is jumping into our flank! The enemy is jumping into our flank! "
The space between the planet ruins and the Empire's defense line was gradually distorting. Countless space vortexes that looked like water ripples were rapidly forming. A large number of black space battleships peeked out from these vortexes. It should be said that it was all thanks to Lin Xue's passive warning system that half of the fleet's cannons had completed their adjustments. The moment these spaceships that attempted to launch a sneak attack appeared, they were bombarded by the close range cannons. A series of huge explosions engulfed the first battleships that appeared, turning them into hot metal that scattered in the air. However, even more Fallen Apostle battleships were continuously surging out from the space jump point. At the same time, the radar also showed that the number of enemy spaceships at the edge of the universe was rapidly decreasing.
"Are they planning to carry out a suicide attack?"
Sandora abruptly stood up. "But it's their bad luck that they appeared in our sight. Ah Jun, prepare for battle."
At first, the enemy had only wandered outside our long-range firing range, bombarding us with extra-dimensional firepower. While this resulted in a severe waste of firepower, it also rendered the top combat power of the Imperial Army useless. Whether it was me, Sandora, Shallow Shallow, or my sister, no matter how powerful we were, we did not have the ability to launch extra-dimensional attacks. Even Pandora and Visca were only suited for space combat within normal firing range. That was why the top combat power of the Empire's fleet was actually wasted when we were ambushed. But now … although the enemy had successfully broken through our gravitational blockade and rushed to the edge of the defense line, posing a great threat to the Empire's fleet, it also gave us a chance to perform.
My sister and Qian Qian weren't suited to fight head-on with the battleship, so they were left on the spaceship to use their powers to cause great trouble for the enemy. Pandora and Weska had already charged into outer space. The two lunatics didn't need to be commanded in such a situation — you wouldn't be able to command them anyway. Shadora and I, who had already entered an Abyss state, followed closely behind the two lunatics to the teleportation device.
But at that moment, he made a new discovery.
"Wait, Your Majesty! The enemy is changing direction! "
The Fallen Apostle Fleet that had forced their way to the flank of the Imperial Army's defense line under the intense bombardment quickly adjusted their formation after the initial panic, but their target was not the Empire's warships that were just inches away. On the contrary, they did not even pause as they changed course and charged towards the planet ruins that only had a core left.
Their target was the Sacred Vault?!
The Fallen Apostle's military operations were as shocking as ever, as if they would surprise everyone with every move they made. Even a prophet like Lin Xue was repeatedly defeated by the enemy's power of the Abyss. Just like this time, Lin Xue was able to predict the direction of the entire battle and the Fallen Apostle's ambush, but she did not see that their true target was the Sacred Vault. She had been disrupted.
"Stop them!"
Lin Xue suddenly shouted. "They are going to steal something very important! The future is once again unstable — they might really succeed! "
All of the close-combat cannons had already adjusted their muzzles and began to bombard the enemy. However, there were just too many of them, and the countless black and sinister warships completely ignored their rapid casualties, continuing to advance even if the warships on the side were to become cannon fodder. There was a limit to the firepower that the Empire's fleet could muster on one flank, and the powerful Galactic main cannons did not dare to use their full power at such a distance. Soon, our interception could not keep up with the speed of the enemy's appearance. As far as the eye could see, the flank of the Imperial Army was already filled with the black warships of the Fallen Apostles!
"Attack!"
This was the only word that could be heard in the command link.
This was the first time that the Fallen Apostles had clashed with their cannons at such a close distance. The massive interstellar warships on both sides were visible to the naked eye. The heavy spaceship armor opened up layer by layer, and countless cannons poked out from below, letting out a soundless roar in the vacuum environment. The bright traces of cannon fire formed a dazzling net of light that resembled the Milky Way between the warships. The advantage of the United Shield vanished as 80% of the energy plunder devices went offline. There were constantly spaceships' shields collapsing, and their armor was pierced through. Psionic light beams and black and red Abyss cannons tore through the interstellar alloy, scattering endless wreckage across the hundreds of thousands of kilometers of defensive line.
All of the motherships' regeneration factories began to operate at full power. The Leader Bee had already entered the crossfire zone on a stealth special service airship, retrieving the souls that were unable to be uploaded through the normal route and sending them into the revival sequence. Due to the few seconds that Lin Xue had bought us to fire ahead of time, the Fallen Apostles' spaceships suffered even greater losses. It was difficult for them to utilize the Abyss's pollution advantage in a situation where they were at a disadvantage in terms of firepower. Even so, they had already successfully approached the alloy shell that was enveloped in a dark red mist — the Holy Warehouse.
Several powerful Abyss cannons struck the surface armor of the Holy Warehouse right in front of us, instantly blowing away the layer of dark red mist and leaving several huge penetrating wounds on the silver-gray shell. The next instant, the shell self-destructed under the corrosion of the Abyss's energy, scattering in all directions.
The object within the Holy Warehouse was revealed — an Empire starship that had been blown into two!
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