Chapter 1 Aftermath of a Fierce Battle

After a fierce battle, the main force finally broke through the layers of gates and the tide of stitched monsters, arriving at a giant cave so vast as to be almost frightening, a sight that stunned everyone.

The previous guess was correct: the entire main peak of Holy Mountain... was actually hollow. It had been excavated into an unprecedentedly huge base.

This giant cave was conical in shape, and the exit through which they had broken in was a metal platform located halfway up the cave. Many such metal platforms could be seen on the cave walls, with a large number of giant mechanical tracks and conduits winding and interweaving across the rock face, connecting the platforms and forming an orderly transport system. Many unmanned mechanical devices scurried between these tracks, busily carrying out their work tasks. And in the center of the cave, a huge warship, like a towering giant tower, loomed before them. It had a black paint job, and its surface was covered in a series of black crystalline thin plates that resembled sails. Several strange red-glowing rings could be seen around the warship's midsection. Around the warship, a large number of crisscrossing metal supports could be seen, with many mechanical devices operating at the ends of these supports, constantly repairing or inspecting the black warship's condition: it was a busy maintenance site, and all the work was nearing completion.

Hao Ren guessed that those supports had probably been standing there for thousands of years.

This warship was smaller than the black warship they had seen on Planet Ieu, but since it was made by giants, its size was still unbelievably large. Perhaps one-third of the entire Holy Mountain had been used to house this behemoth.

When they arrived at the cave, the warship was undergoing a series of frightening launch preparations. The red halos around its waist pulsed rhythmically, and the engine nozzles and anti-gravity generators on the lower half of the warship activated one after another. Each engine preheat brought a booming thunder, and each operation of the anti-gravity generator caused the entire cave to lose its gravitational balance. Millions of tons of rock rubbed and squeezed against each other in the unbalanced gravity, triggering an earthquake-like reaction.

This was the source of the previous loud noises and vibrations.

"No wonder the Brain Monster reacted so strangely before," Izhaks said, wide-eyed. "It probably focused all its energy on this."

"What... is this?" Ofra looked at the scene before her in disbelief. This thing, even more incredible than Hoddses, overwhelmed her. "What does it want to do?"

"I'm thinking, it's preparing to fly," Nangong Sanba swallowed, looking up at the top of the spaceship. He saw a complex and enormous mechanical structure at the top of the cave, which was undoubtedly something that could move. "The Holy Mountain might... the main peak might also fly away..."

Before Nangong Sanba could finish speaking, there was another deafening roar in the cave. The roar of the spaceship's engine echoed in the huge space, as if they were inside a giant bell. Lily covered her ears, her fur standing on end: "Aaaaaah!"

Now this husky was finally not showing off her four-channel ears—she only had two hands, not enough to cover them!

Immediately afterward, everyone suddenly felt lighter, and the intense sense of weightlessness even caused some soldiers who weren't paying attention to leave the ground. At the same time, many lights lit up on the outside of the black spaceship, and all kinds of objects, large and small, in the cave slowly floated up as if they had lost gravity. Nangong Wuyue immediately wrapped her tail around the railing on the edge of the platform: "What's going on, what's going on..."

Gun also flew up, waving its claws and meowing in panic in the air. Hao Ren grabbed the stupid cat's tail to prevent her from flying out of the platform, and explained loudly amidst the roar: "That thing's anti-gravity engine is fully activated! It's preparing to take off!"

As he spoke, the black spaceship was already shaking, and bursts of smoke rose wildly from the lower end of the steel supports. The entire ship seemed ready to take off at any moment, and the mechanical structure at the top of the cave made a series of ear-piercing friction sounds. Huge clods of earth and rocks began to fall like rain, but floated in the air halfway down due to the influence of the anti-gravity field. As the black spaceship continued to awaken, a large number of clods and rocks hovered strangely at the top of the cave.

As all this happened, everyone also heard the sound of gates opening and closing in the corridors behind them. All the closed passages in the entire underground base were opened one after another, and a large number of stitched monsters and even more bizarrely shaped deformed creatures rushed out of countless secret passages. The roar of the beasts came from behind, and the Knights Templar soldiers and monks responsible for guarding the rear and sweeping the enemies around them immediately engaged these monsters, and the sound of fighting grew closer and closer: the Brain Monster was making a desperate attempt to launch this ship, and he would not allow anyone to stop him now.

Outside the Holy Mountain, in the Hoddses Fortress suspended above the crystal mine, the soldiers who were on full alert for the Holy Mountain's movements also panicked. They saw the magnificent high mountain in front of them shaking violently at a rate visible to the naked eye, and a series of earth-shattering roars came from the depths of the Holy Mountain's main peak. The movement triggered a large-scale avalanche, and large masses of white snow rushed down the mountainside, the scene like a sandcastle collapsing. A knight officer looked somewhat helplessly at the bishop beside him: "What's going on? Have they already started a war with the Evil God?"

The bishop called out to the goddess in his heart, but his goddess, who was almost completely dead, could not offer much revelation at this time. The bishop could only press hard on the sacred object in front of his chest to reassure the others: "Don't worry, the power of the goddess will defeat the heretics. The greater the movement in the Holy Mountain, the more it shows that the power of the goddess is exerting its power..."

Before he could finish speaking, he heard soldiers nearby exclaiming loudly: "The summit is opening! The summit is opening!"

The summit of the Holy Mountain underwent an incredible change amidst a series of shaking and roaring sounds. It split open from the middle, and then slowly bloomed like a flower, with the rock shells that had been disguised for thousands or even tens of thousands of years collapsing one after another, and countless huge rocks rolling down the mountainside. But in the center of that flower, the collapsing rocks floated strangely in the air. They did not fall but rose, as if gravity was abnormal.

Countless complex and enormous mechanical structures were gradually exposed from beneath the "blooming" summit. For the first time, the brilliant sunlight shone into the Holy Mountain through this launch port. Looking down from the air, one could see a giant cave, and a black spaceship slowly ascending.

Lily sliced a stitched monster that was attacking from behind into several pieces with her two claws. She kicked the disgusting guy away, and turned to shout at Hao Ren: "Landlord, think of something quickly!"

The bearded ascetic monk was also leading another group of people out of another platform a hundred meters away. He looked at the scene in front of him in astonishment, and shouted to Hao Ren: "Landlord! Use your spaceship to shoot it down!"

To be honest, Hao Ren had already thought of his own Giant Tortoise Rock Terrace, but using the spaceship at this time was definitely not a good idea—the black warship would definitely fight back. If two interstellar warships fired at each other in the atmosphere, how many people in the entire western kingdom would survive?

This was not like using the main gun to attack the First Born back then: the First Born could not move at the time, and it was ambushed. More importantly, it had just awakened from its slumber, its thinking was still very unclear, and if the calculations were careful, one shot could solve the problem. This black spaceship in front of him had been dormant on this planet for thousands of years. It was fully prepared, highly mobile, and its pilot must have personally witnessed the scene of the First Born being killed by space-based firepower. With the enemy fully prepared, Hao Ren had no confidence that he could destroy this ship with one shot.

"We can't fight in the atmosphere!" Hao Ren shouted loudly, "Wait for it to go to space, I will meet it in space!"

At this time, the black warship was rising higher and higher. When this behemoth left the planet's gravitational sphere, it could not rely on conventional reaction engines to propel it. It had to rely on gravity control, and when the Brain Monster (or the giant race) built the spaceship, they obviously promoted their own "giant" style. Their spaceship design was rough and powerful. During the spaceship's ascent, the surrounding anti-gravity field could spread to a large area, and wrapped a large piece of rock with it to fly upwards. Since Hao Ren and the others were still some distance away from the spaceship, they still had weak gravity under their feet, and as long as they paid attention, they would not be "sucked" into space together. But watching the spaceship rise higher and higher, Hao Ren suddenly remembered something, and immediately pushed everyone around him to run towards the corridor behind him: "Get out of here! Get out of here!"

Sure enough, after the black spaceship rose to a certain height, it reduced the power of the anti-gravity field, and as the anti-gravity field shrank...

Huge rocks rained down on the cave.

(New character design progress has been released, see it in the bar =. =)