Chapter 1 The Situation is Extraordinary

The superluminal observation equipment transmitted images from afar, and Hao Ren realized at a glance that this situation was unusual.

He saw a massive wreckage floating in space, its remains possessing a distinct curved surface and a conical base. Based on the observed dimensions, it was easy to determine that it was a fragment left over after a planet even larger than Earth had been torn apart.

Shockingly, there were still traces of survivors on this shattered fragment of a celestial body—artificial lights glittered on the surface of the wreckage, and the land illuminated by these artificial light sources still displayed lush greenery. A layer of faintly glowing "veil" enveloped this space continent, a sign that the atmosphere still lingered. Without a doubt, this remaining third of a planetary fragment possessed an incredible life-support system, and this system was still functioning to this day.

But the condition of this broken celestial body was not optimistic, because a dark and terrifying army was surrounding it, and had already launched an attack.

Hao Ren zoomed in on the image with the superluminal observation equipment and ordered Nolan to release swift probes for covert observation. When the observation images from various angles were transmitted back, even the experienced Hao Ren couldn't help but exclaim in astonishment—what on earth were those things?

It was a chaotic coalition composed of countless twisted and mutated alien creatures and steel monsters. No systematic or rational descriptive method could accurately represent the true appearance of these monsters—they included bloated masses of flesh as huge as skyscrapers, soft-bodied creatures covered in tentacles and eyestalks, beasts pieced together from various limbs and heads, and giants covered in swollen, festering sores. And these bizarre flesh monsters were merely the "small fries" in the army. Mixed in with this legion were many hybrid entities that seemed like warships made of biological and metallic components. Hao Ren believed that those hybrid entities with layered armor and writhing tentacles were some kind of starship that had been parasitized and occupied by biological organisms. They vaguely retained the outlines of their former selves as starships, but all the surfaces were covered with a layer of black substance that seemed to writhe like living flesh, and a large number of proliferating limbs protruded from the cracks in their shells, twisting wildly in space.

Hao Ren immediately thought of the chaos monsters he had seen in the Kolos world.

Chaos, disorder, madness, filled with blasphemy and corruption, devoid of reason and extremely…ugly.

At this moment, this super-ugly army, capable of destroying the world with its mere appearance, was launching an attack on the faintly glowing celestial fragment that resembled a secluded paradise. All kinds of filthy beams and fleshy "cannonballs" bombarded the floating island from space, and a faint light emerged on the latter's surface. This energy barrier temporarily blocked the destructive forces, but the trembling of the light membrane indicated that this protection would probably not last long.

Seeing the appearance of that chaotic legion, even Vivian, who was usually indifferent to everything, couldn't help but reveal a disgusted expression, covering her mouth with her hand and murmuring, "There are actually such things in this galaxy… What are they? Where did they come from?"

"I'm afraid it's inextricably linked to the Mad Lord. This kind of chaotic and corrupt thing is the Mad Lord's consistent style," Hao Ren said with a frown, while issuing advance orders to the drone swarm. "But this is the first time we've seen such 'Mad Lord's claws' appear in space… and in this X-cluster. The water is too deep. I feel that the water in this X-cluster is too deep."

Nolan reversed course and accelerated towards the location of the battle, and beside her, the dark space seemed empty, but this was just an illusion: in fact, at this moment, thousands of armed drones were escorting her forward, but all the drones had activated their stealth modules and could not be observed.

In fact, Hao Ren had also upgraded the Stealth Action function for the Lande-class Battlecruiser, but at this moment, he did not activate this function, but chose to let Nolan drive over in such a swaggering manner—this should give those corrupted monsters a surprise.

He just didn't know if their rotten thinking organs could still understand what a "surprise" was…

On the floating island that remained after the planet shattered, the fae were in complete disarray.

The terrifying pursuers had finally arrived, swarming like vultures that had smelled the stench of a corpse. They emerged from the dark depths of space and quickly surrounded the space continent, which had lost its power. The divine power emitted by the space continent was fatally attractive to these corrupted and fallen creatures, so they launched a ruthless attack as soon as they appeared.

Long before the enemies appeared, the fae were formulating response strategies in a chaotic manner, but their disorganized discussion methods and highly jumpy thinking patterns led to this response strategy also being extremely chaotic. The fae ran around the space continent, drilling into ancient temples, into giant cannons without energy, into damaged shield generators, and even into the sealed pipes and engines deep underground that had been sealed for three thousand years. They tried frantically to activate these long-obsolete gadgets, but in fact, they had tried countless similar actions in the past three thousand years, but had never succeeded.

Then they began to work hard to repair, tearing up the ancient facilities into a mess, and then piecing them together again in a haphazard manner. They took the manuals left by the Guardian Giants and prepared to activate the fortress's emergency security system, but after searching around, they found that there was no emergency security system—because that part of the device was buried in the Earth's core, and the Earth's core had long been blown up.

But believe it or not, this group of chaotic fae actually managed to light up the shield generator that had been down for three thousand years at the last moment, although that generator was only a part of the original huge planetary shield system, and the shield strength it produced was so weak that it was unbearable to look at…

But they just turned on the shield and have been holding on until now!

"The shield is working! The shield is working! Those bad guys are blocked outside!"

The fae gathered noisily around the shield generator (or maybe gathered somewhere else), clamoring in a happy atmosphere.

"The shield generator that was already so broken can still be used! We are really amazing!"

"Thank the Goddess for blessing us, our great crisis has finally been resolved!"

"Resolved, resolved!"

"..."

"But those bad guys are still outside! The shield can't drive them away! They will break the shield sooner or later!"

"We're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to die…"

"Counterattack, counterattack, we must counterattack! We must fire at the bad guys to drive them away! There is a limit to relying on the shield alone!"

"Yes, yes, yes, fire the cannons, counterattack, counterattack! Hurry up and fire the cannons!"

"..."

"But we still don't have cannons!"

"We're going to die, we're going to die, we're going to die…"

The fae instantly fell into a huge crisis again, and the chaos and panic were even more severe than before the enemy had come. But in the midst of a chaotic noise, some particularly brave fae raised their heads and saw something unfamiliar suddenly appearing in the universe.

In fact, if a human being were to look up, his naked eyes would never be able to spot the tiny spaceship that had just emerged from the edge of the battlefield, but for the fae, anything that appeared within their perception range, even a speck of dust, was as conspicuous as the sun.

"Something's coming out!"

"I see it, I see it, it looks like a ship!"

"Whose ship is it? Has the Guardian Giant finally found us?!"

"It doesn't look like the Guardian Giant's ship, it's white…"

"That's not white, that's silver!"

"It's about the same thing!"

"That ship is fighting the bad guys!"

"Oh, oh, they're fighting! They're helping us! They're helping us! They're great people!"

"We should help, we can't just watch from the sidelines!"

"But… we still don't have cannons…"

"Ah, so troublesome, so troublesome, let the Queen make the decision! Let the Queen make the decision!"

"..."

"But we don't have a Queen!"

On the bridge of the Lande-class Battlecruiser, Nolan's holographic projection controlled the weapon systems while quickly saying, "Boss, since just now, there have been irregular, high-frequency, low-intensity energy fluctuations constantly being generated on that space continent. This is a bit strange."

"It's normal for an old and dilapidated fortress group to have some energy fluctuations," Hao Ren glanced at the floating continent in space. From the broken part of the floating continent, he could clearly see mechanical structures and things like pipes protruding from the rock formations. He naturally thought that those things were the fortress groups originally built on this continent. "Don't worry about the situation below, taking out the enemy is the top priority."

"Nolan understands."

The sudden entry of the Lande-class Battlecruiser unexpectedly caused huge waves.

As Hao Ren had learned from his previous encounters with chaos monsters, the creatures that had been contaminated and corrupted by the Mad Lord were full of violent and disorderly factors. Even if they still had a little ability to think, all of these thinking abilities would be used for fighting—a third-party spaceship that suddenly appeared on the edge of the battlefield instantly angered the dark army in space.

Countless twisted and terrifying monsters turned their heads, waving their mutated limbs wildly while launching attacks. Although it was not known how these guys were able to move and fight flexibly in space, this did not hinder the unfolding of a chaotic battle.

But the attention that a spaceship could attract was limited, so Hao Ren ordered Nolan to lift the restrictions on all the weapons on the Lande-class Battlecruiser, while maximizing the shield output, and plunging straight into the area with the most enemies.

The main cannon bloomed with dazzling brilliance, and the powerful psionic beam swept across space, turning countless monsters into shattered crystal dust. The twelve sets of secondary guns on both sides of the warship and the countless launchers hidden under the armored belts poured a rain of artillery fire in all directions. The Lande-class Battlecruiser seemed to instantly sprout countless light spears, and with an indomitable momentum, it forced a huge blank area in the monster group.

And such a reckless advance also attracted a strong counterattack: although most of the monsters lacked brains, they had excellent combat talent. They instantly reacted and smashed all their most powerful attacks onto the shields of the Lande-class Battlecruiser.

All kinds of filthy energy beams and physical shells exploded on the spaceship's shields, and the entire ship shook violently as if passing through a storm during the assault. Nolan shouted while charging, "Shields down to eighty percent…seventy…sixty!"

"Go straight through, we're not going to stand and fight them."

"Nolan understands!"

The dark legion in space was not the same as those weak chickens that Hao Ren had dealt with before. They were also capable of space combat, and their lethality was particularly powerful. A single assault by the Lande-class Battlecruiser consumed nearly forty percent of the shield capacity. If he had really come alone in a spaceship, then he would probably have to go back and ask the Goddess to help him resurrect.

But he was not alone.

The Lande-class Battlecruiser successfully attracted and angered a massive number of twisted monsters with a spectacular assault. The artillery fire thrown around randomly and the rapidly drifting spaceship made these guys, who already lacked the ability to think, instantly forget their original combat objectives. Wherever Nolan went, countless monsters abandoned their original battle positions and turned to chase. And such a departure behavior led to their already loose and disorderly positions becoming even more chaotic.

Looking from a distance, it was as if a gust of wind had suddenly swept through a swarm of bees that had originally gathered densely, and then a large number of bee swarms began to fly around the periphery in a mess.

But it was impossible to rely on this kind of lure to disperse the encirclement around the planetary wreck, because the monsters would not really completely give up their combat objectives and turn to chase a female driver who seemed impossible to catch forever. Nolan's speeding was just to create enough chaos on the periphery of the monster army.

After those monsters had obviously become stratified and isolated due to random chasing, Hao Ren gave the drone swarm an order:

"Drone swarm, enter the field."