Chapter 1 The Silent Giant Turtle Rock Platform

The Giant Turtle Rock Platform hovered quietly in space. Several kilometers below the ship was the Nakdal continent, its giant shield shimmering. This fortress, based on an entire space continent, was disengaging from the inspection array. The land, teeming with temples, artillery, factories, and drone storage, moved slowly beneath the ship. The real-time images from the external monitors showed a moving steel jungle.

"Truly an incredible miracle..." Izhaks exclaimed sincerely. The old demon might no longer lead armies, but he still held high regard for war machines that could inspire awe from the depths of one's heart. "Back in my old home, something of this scale would be enough to be a living land, supporting several kingdoms. But here, it's a mobile weapon, carrying devastating power..."

"Agudar is bigger, isn't it?" Lily said, lying on her seat, wagging her tail as she watched the holographic projection. "And that planetary fortress is complete—much better than this fragment that's only a third of a planet."

"Sense of accomplishment, don't you understand?" Hao Ren glared at the husky. "I personally led the drone swarm to改造 (gaizao, transform/remodel) Nakdal. The giants built Agudar. They're not the same."

Lily thought for a moment, "I don't think so. I usually don't cook myself, but I'm still satisfied when I eat ribs stewed by Vivian. Right, Vivian?"

Vivian crossed her arms. "I told you, you can't reason with this idiot."

"The Guardian Legion has begun to mobilize. According to the plan, Agudar will remain near the hub as the main base. In this operation, our Nakdal will be the only large fortress," Nolan's figure appeared on the bridge, surrounded by various reports and images from the Guardian Legion. "The newly added structures on the southern end of the continent are working well. The structural field stabilizers and inertial dampers are all functioning—this is the first time we've used this type of warship equipment on a pile of rocks and buildings. It seems to be working pretty well; after all, the principles are the same."

Hao Ren nodded, watching the various lights gradually lighting up on the Nakdal continent. "Whether it works well or not will only be known when facing actual combat."

The massive space continent, propelled by countless giant engines, began to accelerate slowly. Its inverted cone-shaped base was once covered in huge cracks and fire-spewing pipes and mechanical structures, but these had all been repaired by the engineering drone swarm. All exposed mechanical structures were sealed, and the cracks were replaced by shining silver-white armored belts. The extending giant connecting bridges and the ends of the continental skeleton were equipped with vast engine arrays, ground-based weapon modules, and countless drone facilities. In addition to the drone factories and secondary psionic artillery on the edge of the surface, these new facilities made the entire Nakdal fortress a whole circle larger than before.

In fact, it was a little too big—in the southern part of the continent, a large piece of land had even been grafted on, with a large number of metal skeletons and bridge structures connecting a "satellite island"改造 (gaizao, transformed/remodelled) from an asteroid. This satellite island nestled beside Nakdal like the main continent's "satellite," covered in huge cannons and energy arrays, looking like a maddened additional weapon pod.

A planetary continent-level weapon pod.

And around Nakdal was a tide of drones surging like a giant wave. This drone tide arched and supported Nakdal in an approximately spherical array, seemingly "completing" the planetary fragment, which was a breathtaking sight in space.

Further away, the Guardian Legion was setting out—Salaman personally led the legion on the Airship El, with thousands of mothership-class black warships and tens of thousands of escort ships arranged in neat arrays, disengaging from Agudar's gravitational berth. After disengaging, they scattered and entered warp preparation in seemingly chaotic and extremely loose formations.

The Guardians' warships, unlike the drone swarms, could not rely on proximity to construct a joint protective field, so they deliberately loosened and disordered their formations during space combat to improve the army's survivability. This was also a common combat method used by space civilizations that had not developed joint shield technology—except, of course, for those reckless fools who had neither joint shields nor absolute numbers nor overwhelming strength but were still keen on mindless A-moving.

Salaman's image appeared on the communicator's holographic projection. The old giant nodded to Vivian. "Mistress of the Throne, the Guardian Legion is in combat-ready status and awaits your orders at any time."

"I've said it many times, just call me by my name..." Vivian sighed with a headache. "Oh well, call me whatever you want. Anyway, it's still the same as before. I don't understand army command, so actual combat is still your and your staff's responsibility. Your main task is to attack with the drone legion and build fortifications outside of Amantir's destructive range. Be prepared to receive us after receiving our message."

Salaman nodded slightly, but hesitated before speaking, "We can undertake more..."

"The task given to you is simple, but it's of great significance," Vivian interrupted. "This operation is not about defeating the enemy on the front lines. This is a special operation, understand?"

The giant legion commander lowered his head. "Yes, according to your order."

Ending the communication, Hao Ren saw continuous flashes of light coming from the direction of the Guardian Legion in space, which was the sign of the fleet entering warp. He turned to Nolan and nodded slightly. "Land on Nakdal's southern satellite island. Let's go too."

A moment later, the Nakdal fortress and the entire drone swarm entered a shimmering space distortion field and disappeared into space in the blink of an eye.

When the various disturbances and oscillations caused by space teleportation finally subsided slowly, the legion had arrived in a completely new domain.

This was the airspace dominated by the Corruptor Legion and the Amantir war fortress.

"Warp space opened, optical path clear, external image restored… transferring."

As Nolan's voice fell, the images collected by the external monitors were also transmitted to the bridge. The first thing Hao Ren saw was the strange purple-red color that was everywhere in space.

The power of the Lord of Pandemonium had completely infected and corrupted the once-sacred Amantir planetary fortress and turned the fortress's powerful energy furnace into its own breeding ground for growth. The chaotic evil energy gushing out of the energy furnace diffused into space, distorting the distant starlight into a bizarre and hideous appearance. A light of pale purple-red filled the space, and this light contained the power to corrupt and madden mortal species.

And in the center of this purple-red ominous land was the planetary fortress, Amantir, which revealed a blood-red glow in the darkness.

The corrupted planetary fortress floated quietly in the center of the viewscreen. The fortress was covered with cracked lava vents and erupting volcanoes. Poisonous water surged continuously in the fortress's remaining rivers and oceans, and the resulting toxic vapors wrapped the entire planet in circles of strange color rings. And at the planet's equator, the huge scar known as the "Vicious Rift" still rolled with red light, and disturbed Corruptors swarmed out of that rift like a swarm of insects.

But faster to react than those Corruptors were the various orbital cannons and defense platforms performing defensive missions in Amantir's orbit—as well as the Corruptor army stationed in space.

"The enemy has begun to intercept. The Guardian Legion is making contact with the enemy on the front."

"Drone swarm deployed. Combat sequence 1 to 233 are entering interception positions… Entering the engagement phase."

"Nakdal fortress is beginning to move."

"Drone swarm combat sequences 234 to 368 engaging the enemy on the flanks!"

There was no time to reorganize formations, nor was there any room to slowly deploy positions, observe the enemy situation, and formulate strategies. The Corruptors' counterattack was swift and ruthless, and the drone legion and the Guardian Legion launched fierce exchanges with the enemy at the same time as they arrived on the battlefield.

War reports were almost instantly summarized to the bridge, and then automatically processed by Nolan's own on-board battlefield module and the data terminal's battlefield processing program, which were converted into complex instructions that humans could hardly understand and process, and sent to the cluster consciousness of the drone swarm. Then, the cluster consciousness further refined these instructions into an unimaginable stream of data, sending it to every armed drone on the battlefield.

The whole process was almost without any delay.

This was a battlefield execution process with terrifying efficiency. In short, Hao Ren boxed a wave of thirty million population and A-moved them over, and then each of these thirty million soldiers actually had 800 APM operations. On the surface, you see me F2 A-moving, but in reality...

Okay, in reality, Hao Ren did indeed F2 A-move them over, but the drone swarm is awesome, and if you don't agree, then why don't you try to not die.

The disturbed Corruptor army surged and twisted violently like a mass of sludge floating in space, and then differentiated into countless black tides that pounced on the invading enemy. The Guardian army led by Salaman fearlessly launched remote bombardments against them, and as the "new guests" in this ancient star system, the drone swarm once again demonstrated its way of engaging the enemy on the battlefield.

They swarmed in, overwhelming, crazed, and ruthless, but at the same time, they were orderly, precise, efficient, calm, and rational. Every drone was the most accurate part in the machine swarm, and the "drone tide" they formed was a huge, ruthless meat grinder.

However, this time, the number of drones did not seem to be as large as last time.

It was as if the combat units lost in the last melee had not had time to be replenished. This time, the machine swarm covering the face of the Corruptors was significantly thinner than before, so the situation of direct submersion and near crushing did not appear this time.

The Corruptor army and the drone swarm were fighting back and forth.

While the drone swarm and the Amantir defenders were fighting fiercely, Salaman's image appeared again on the holographic projection in front of Hao Ren.

"Our remote sensing radar found the energy reaction of the Amantir crystal near that rift."