Chapter 1 The Ongoing Battle

The drone swarm was already in a full-fledged melee with Amantir's defense forces.

This was a battle that left the Mad Claw lackeys helpless. Although they had tangled with these drones two or three times, their commanders still couldn't adapt to these suddenly emerging, cold machines. In thousands of years of war, they had only faced the Guardian giants' fleets, and they were accustomed to conventional tactics: two legions keeping their distance for long-range artillery fire, flanking maneuver forces harassing, and giant cannons suppressing the line. However, the emergence of the drone swarm brought them a completely new challenge.

The drone swarm didn't engage in long-range artillery fire and had hardly any fortress cannons. They used extremely advanced battlefield-hopping abilities to quickly traverse the entire battlefield, appearing right in front of you, and then blasting your face with high-energy reactions from their rapid-fire cannons. If your air defense firepower was strong enough to shoot them down in time, they would simply fall on your head and self-destruct.

These cold mechanical lives were like a swarm of insects, going directly to the closest point and attacking in groups. Most heavy artillery was useless against these things. Once forced into close-quarters dogfights, giant warships performed even worse than a mutated beast waving its tentacles.

Therefore, those corrupted warships with powerful firepower and long-range radar systems were the first to be forced out of the battle. Only some ships remained on one side of the battlefield to confront the Guardian Legion's giant cannon ships, while the remaining corrupters were locked in a temporarily deadlocked melee with the drone swarm.

"Transitioning into a stalemate. Enemy heavy firepower units have retreated, but the number of light firepower units and high-mobility units has increased by at least double. Our drone swarm is barely enough," the data terminal said while looking at the battle report. "Nakdal has attracted attention. This unit has detected an enemy force approaching."

Hao Ren nodded, "Don't worry about it. The modified shield can withstand attacks for quite a long time. Continue forward. After reaching the target point, commence bombing."

They were no longer on the bridge of the Giant Tortoise Rock, but at a command station on the Nakdal Fortress. This was a newly built facility with a data connection to the control center, but its architectural style and size were more suitable for normal human needs. Staying here wouldn't create the oppressive feeling of being surrounded by giant facilities like standing in the temple of a Guardian giant.

The structure of the command station was similar to the Giant Tortoise Rock's bridge. The center of a ring-shaped platform was a sunken giant holographic projector generator. At this moment, the holographic projection clearly showed the scene near Amantir.

A steady stream of corrupter armies continued to pour out of the huge rift, entangled with the drone swarm in space, while the Guardian Legion's warships struggled to advance under the cover of the drone swarm. At this moment, they had finally managed to occupy a piece of ground tens of thousands of kilometers above the top of the atmosphere and began to carry out pinpoint bombing of the planetary fortress: orange-red and bright white beams shot out from the railguns below the black warships, splashing onto the turbid, rust-colored planetary shield of Amantir. Large clusters of light and ripples erupted where the artillery fire and shield met. Where the ripples were most dense, the shield already showed obvious interference patterns.

That turbid shield was an important barrier for the Amantir Fortress, protecting the filthy and blasphemous land below, but breaking through at one point would not cause a complete collapse of the entire shield: Guardian technology was not low in the aspect of shield force fields, and they had already mastered "force field frequency division technology." This technology allowed their shields to be divided into countless effective zones. After a single effective zone was penetrated, the shield force field would immediately reset to ensure that the force field in other areas remained intact.

However, all Hao Ren needed was to break through a small area on this shield.

Salaman's holographic image stood beside Hao Ren. The giant legion commander took this opportunity to introduce the situation of the Amantir Fortress: "The battle three thousand years ago caused irreparable damage to both sides. When Nakdal was destroyed, it was activating its own doomsday weapon. The fortress core was filled with energy. The outbreak of these energies caused great damage to everything on the battlefield: part of the hub's shield was penetrated by the Tide of Ending, and the Star People paid a great price to repair it; Agodar's energy system was impacted, almost all conventional weapon stations were burned down, and the energy core was also damaged; those monsters' Amantir was not much better off. Nakdal's blasted energy center happened to hit Amantir, tearing that wound at its equator… It's just a pity that it dodged in time, unloading most of the impact, otherwise that fortress would probably have been cut in half."

"How exactly are those monsters replenishing their forces?" Hao Ren looked at the corrupter army constantly emerging from the equatorial rift of Amantir, and couldn't help but frown. "And it seems that this originally fatal wound has now been transformed into a garrison… How many monsters can be hidden inside?"

"We haven't been able to figure out this point either. Their soldiers seem to be endless. No matter how many are wiped out on the battlefield, they can always replenish them after a while," Salaman shook his head. "The speed and quantity of replenishment exceed the resources they can collect on the battlefield and Amantir's own production capacity. We suspect that they have established resource collection points in other places in the Holy Land, or even outside the Holy Land… But these can only be speculations. We are trapped in the center of the Holy Land and have no power to send out reconnaissance troops."

"It shouldn't be resources collected from the outside," Vivian shook her head gently. "We came from the outside. Now our drone swarm has expanded its reconnaissance range to most of the star system, and we haven't found any other lairs of these corrupted monsters. Moreover, there are still divine power storms working in other places in the x star cluster. These monsters can still move freely in a corrupted environment, but they can't in the divine power storms."

Hao Ren stroked his chin, "If possible, we should investigate that rift."

At this time, Salaman seemed to have heard a report from the person beside him. He turned around and talked to someone, then turned to look at Hao Ren: "The target area is about to be penetrated. Should we switch to the second phase?"

Hao Ren looked at the large holographic projection. He saw that at the place where the Guardian Legion was concentrating its bombing, Amantir's shield already showed extremely obvious interference noise. Those pale, chaotic ripples covered a large area hundreds of kilometers wide like snowflakes on an old TV. Within this area, the energy circulation of the planetary shield was almost stagnant, and it was obvious that it was about to be penetrated.

The counter-fire from the surface of the planet was even more fierce than before. The corrupters had realized that the invaders were determined to drill a hole in their shield, so they transferred a lot of energy to the giant anti-space cannons on the surface, and the Guardian starships performing the bombing mission were enduring firepower attacks far exceeding the design limits of the ships. Although a large number of drones selflessly helped them withstand the anti-aircraft fire from the planetary fortress, one black warship after another was still withdrawn from the battle sequence.

The corners of Hao Ren's mouth curled up slightly: the timing was just right.

"Guardian fleet retreats, Nakdal enters, switch to the second phase, operation code name: Shadow Emperor."

The black fleet in space immediately began to execute its retreat, flying away from the anti-aircraft fire without looking back under the cover of the drone swarm—which probably looked to the ground defenders like they were fleeing in panic because they couldn't withstand Amantir's anti-aircraft guns.

But the retreat of the black fleet did not mean the end of the battle, because an even larger firepower monster rushed over from the rear of the battlefield, filling the gap left after the black fleet left.

The Nakdal Fortress entered the bombing position and began to continue to bombard the planetary shield with various giant cannons installed on the fortress base. The area of interference on the Nakdal shield was originally gradually shrinking, but with the arrival of the new bombing, it immediately stopped repairing and instead expanded at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"To be honest, I really think you came up with this operation code name with your back teeth," Lily said while widening her eyes and watching the scene of the anti-star weapons firing, while wagging her tail. "The 'Trojan Operation' I thought of was so much better."

"The means of sneaking in are secondary. The most important thing in this operation is acting, do you understand acting?" Hao Ren glanced at the husky girl. "And you better find a place to sit down honestly like everyone else. The vibration won't be small later."

"What's a little vibration!" The husky girl confidently put her hands on her hips. "I'm the Siberian King! Don't even mention vibration with my physique…"

Before she could finish her words, the entire Nakdal Fortress produced violent oscillations under the impact of the anti-space cannons, and alarm bells rang throughout the command station.

The husky girl, who was still full of vigor a second ago, immediately howled and rushed back to her chair, strapping herself in with a seat belt.

The Nakdal's entry obviously gave the corrupters greater pressure, and the slowdown in the drone swarm's offensive on the main battlefield gave them the opportunity to adjust their firepower. Almost in an instant, countless large and small anti-aircraft giant cannons and defense orbital cannons in nearby space pointed their muzzles at the Nakdal Fortress, which was extremely conspicuous on the battlefield.

In this fierce barrage, countless ripples appeared on the shield wrapped around the entire floating continent.

However, the Nakdal Fortress had no intention of retreating. Instead, it continued to carry out its bombing mission while braving the anti-aircraft fire, and descended towards the area of interference on the Amantir shield. Around it, countless drones began to突击 at the same time like they were crazy: it looked like they were preparing for a strong attack.

"Amantir's garrison seems to be going crazy…" Looking at the countless flashes that suddenly lit up on the surface of the planet, Hao Ren said leisurely with emotion.

In a free channel, the exclamations of the fairies almost burst the entire communication link: "Ahhhhhh we're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to die!!!"

In fact, these fairies had been chattering for a long time… but no one paid attention to them.

Anyway, even if they chirped and shouted that they were going to die, they could still properly control the various subsystems of the fortress.

Vivian reminded Hao Ren from the side: "Don't play too much. If those corrupters judge that the Nakdal Fortress's combat power cannot resist, they may really detonate the entire Amantir and perish with us."

"Don't worry, this little stimulation is not enough. It would be hilarious if these Mad Claw lackeys could be collectively scared to death so easily," Hao Ren grinned. "And look—the opportunity has come, hasn't it?"

Under the barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the surface of the planet, the drone escort team around the Nakdal Fortress exploded into brilliant fireworks in the universe in patches, and an unprecedentedly huge dark red pattern gradually emerged from the surface of Amantir. In the center of that dark red pattern, dazzling clusters of light spurted out.

The data terminal immediately screamed: "Warning, ultra-high energy reaction, ultra-high energy reaction!"

"All energy is transferred to the shield, prioritizing the protection of the survival area," Hao Ren adjusted his posture in the seat. "Prepare to detonate the attached island connecting belt."

The large weapon on the surface of the planet had completed charging, and a huge cluster of light gradually enlarged in the field of vision.

"This is a crazy plan, but I believe you will succeed…" Salaman's image became blurred in the energy interference, his voice was intermittent, and finally completely interrupted.

The huge dark red cluster of light finally hit the Nakdal's shield. In an unprecedented explosion, the shield shattered like a glass shell, and the entire Nakdal space continent also erupted in a series of large explosions. In the continuous chain of explosions, it split in two, and the newly added southern attached island completely separated from the main body.

But no one noticed that at the moment the shield of the space continent shattered, two smaller and more concealed transparent shields lit up on the main body and attached island of the space continent respectively: Amantir's anti-aircraft giant cannons merely destroyed the outer shield of this space base, it was not directly hit at all.

The Nakdal Fortress, which had its "shield destroyed" and was "severely damaged" in a series of "chain explosions," immediately began to climb and made a gesture of fleeing the battlefield, while the detached attached island seemed to have lost power, filled with smoke and flames, dragging a long trajectory and falling towards the surface of Amantir.

It crashed through the area of interference on the planetary shield that had already been worn down and almost penetrated, and in the process of this impact it rolled violently, splitting into three fragments of different sizes, and then fell into Amantir's thick atmosphere, flashing away.

"If I didn't know the 'script' in advance," Salaman stood on the bridge of his flagship, saying expressionlessly to the adjutant beside him, "I would have really thought they were shot down…"