447: This thing is way too hard.

The silence of the J9A-BH Star System was suddenly broken.

No ultimatum, no declaration.

When the expeditionary fleets of the three great Empires completed their final formation adjustments at the edge of their range, and all fire control radars finished their final calibration on that solitary space structure, the attack orders were issued in synchronized harmony through the command chains of their respective flagships.

"Fire!"

"Target confirmed, main guns volley!"

"For the glory of the Empire!"

From the direction of the Amarr Empire fleet, light first flared up.

Along the broadsides of fifteen Revelation-class Dreadnoughts, rows of giant laser focusing arrays, with diameters comparable to small frigates, completed their final calibration.

In the next instant, space itself seemed to be torn apart as dozens of dark-red high-energy beams, thick enough to penetrate dozens of meters of alloy, streaked toward the target at the speed of light like the swords of judgment from myth.

Wherever they passed, even space seemed to ripple with subtle distortions.

Almost simultaneously, from the direction of the Caldari fleet, the hatches of missile silos opened layer by layer like scales. The vertical launch Systems of ten Phoenix-class Dreadnoughts, along with hundreds of surrounding Scorpion-class Battleships and Heavy Cruisers, completed their ignition sequences at the same time.

Tens of thousands of missiles of various types, trailing dense plumes of exhaust, swarmed like an enraged hive, obscuring a small portion of the starry sky as they lunged toward the same coordinates with a deathly shriek.

From fist-sized, incredibly fast Anti-ship armor-piercing shells to heavy torpedoes the size of small shuttles with enough explosives to shatter a large dam.

This was the direct embodiment of the Caldari State's "Firepower is Truth" philosophy.

The Minmatar fleet was a half-beat slower, but their firepower coverage was the most extensive. Metal projectiles accelerated to nearly one-ten-thousandth the speed of light formed a death barrage that covered almost every evasion angle in less than 0.1 seconds.

No fancy energy beams, no complex guidance trajectories—only the purest, most brutal kinetic energy.

Flagship-level firepower from the three great Empires, distinct in style but all representing the peak of New Eden's military might, crossed tens of thousands of kilometers of the Void Realm at this moment to converge on a single point.

That quietly floating ring-shaped megastructure they called the "Sky Fortress."

Spectacular, terrifying, and enough to make the Soul of any witness tremble.

This was a devastating volley capable of instantly vaporizing a large-diameter asteroid, the ultimate means used by the three great nations to establish hegemony and clear all obstacles... Sharpening Sword Base, Sky Fortress Command Center No. 1.

On the massive main screen, light dots representing the three destructive energies converged toward the center at a heart-pounding speed.

"Enemy flagship clusters, volley countdown: 3, 2, 1."

"Energy reading peak has Breakthrough the warning line. Category: hybrid, kinetic, and explosive composite attack."

"Building shield System running at full power. Regional energy allocation initiated, prioritizing the forward defense sector."

It was that plain, without any impassioned pre-battle mobilization.

Lin Yizhou stood before the command seat with his hands behind his back, his gaze calmly fixed on the screen.

In his vision, that world-destroying attack was merely a few rapidly approaching trajectory lines on the screen, labeled with different colors and threat Ranks.

"Begin recording actual combat test data."

"Yes."

At the moment the three-colored torrent of destruction was about to swallow the Sky Fortress, the Sky Fortress itself lit up first.

A thick, pale-blue energy shield, almost condensed into substance, instantly expanded with the Sky Fortress at its center; its range was so vast it even enveloped a significant portion of the surrounding fleet.

Next were the tens of thousands of Array-base ships orbiting the Sky Fortress in specific trajectories.

These specially modified ships had completely abandoned their offensive capabilities at this moment, pouring all their energy and computing power into maintaining and strengthening this giant shield.

"Energy transmission link load at 55%, rising steadily."

"Shield strength peak has reached 300% of the nominal value and is still climbing."

"Metal impact detected, deflection field activated!"

The area of the shield surface being hit instantly turned from pale blue to incandescent white, fluctuating and boiling violently as if it would shatter in the next second.

But almost simultaneously, invisible energy surged frantically toward the point of impact through the network formed by those tens of thousands of ships.

The shield's color receded from incandescent white at an incredible speed; though it still oscillated violently, it stubbornly refused to collapse.

Following closely were the Caldari missiles. However, after entering a certain range of the shield's perimeter, these missiles seemed to hit a wall filled with viscosity.

Speed plummeted, trajectories twisted, and a large number of small missiles even self-destructed in mid-air due to overload. Only the largest, most heavily loaded heavy torpedoes could struggle through this stagnation field and continue to strike the shield itself.

Then, they encountered the hedgehog-like dense point-defense arrays on the surface of the Sky Fortress. They wove a net, blowing those heavy torpedoes out of the sky while they were still dozens of kilometers away from the shield.

The flashes of explosions merged into a single sheet, yet like waves crashing against a reef, they could not budge the shield in the slightest.

As for the remaining projectiles that relied purely on kinetic energy for damage, the defense effect of the energy shield was not very obvious, but the deflection effect was outstanding.

The kinetic projectiles were guided in other directions, with only a very small portion slamming into the extremely thick metal armor.

"Boom—!!!"

There were still final impacts. Even after being weakened layer by layer, the combined strike of the three Empires' flagships still contained astronomical amounts of energy.

"Shield strength 81%... 73%... 55%... 49%..."

"Energy transmission link load at 88%! Shield generators on some peripheral node ships are overloading!"

"Regional energy allocation complete, backup energy link connected!"

"Shield strength 25%... 22%... 20%... Stabilized!"

Just as the shield strength dropped below the 20% warning line and seemed on the verge of collapsing, the downward trend was forcibly checked.

Not only that, but the moment the external pressure eased slightly, the shield strength began to rise against the trend at a visible speed.

"Shield strength 21%... 23%... 28%... Recovering."

Lin Yizhou raised an eyebrow slightly. "Resistance data?"

"Peak attack energy absorption rate 77.7%, kinetic dispersion efficiency 88.7%..." Mu Wan reported quickly. "The theoretical resistance limit is approximately 1.8 times the intensity of this volley."

"Only 1.8 times?" Zhao Youcheng's voice came from the side, tinged with a bit of disappointment. "I thought it could hold out for three or five rounds."

"Theory is theory; in actual combat, there are always unexpected factors mixed in," Lin Yizhou said calmly.

Lin Yizhou turned his gaze to the other end of the screen, toward the Imperial fleets whose formations were slightly disorganized as they underwent emergency cooling and recharging after the volley.

"It seems it's turn-based. Well, now it's our turn. Target the salient of the enemy's forward conventional fleet. Begin the attack."

"Yes!"

In the command channel of the Imperial Joint Fleet, a dead silence lasted for a full ten seconds.

The world-destroying strike just now was the source of their confidence, the symbol of the Empire's military power.

In their expectations, that "Sky Fortress," along with the ridiculous fleets in strange formations around it, should have been turned into cosmic dust under that blow, leaving at most a mess of wreckage.

But now... the feedback from the scans was quite cruel, for them.

"Target... the target's shield still exists! Strength is rapidly recovering!" Someone's voice in the channel began to tremble, filled with disbelief.

"What?!" The Commander of the Amarr fleet, that Prince, Your Highness, stood up from his command seat in a loss of composure for the first time, staring fixedly at the flickering pale-blue light dome on the screen.

"Impossible! Even an eon-class would never hold out under such a volley!"

"What is this thing? It's too hard!"

The initial confidence turned into shock, then into panic.

"Its shield regeneration speed is too fast!" On the Caldari flagship, the Commander watched the rapidly jumping data, his face ashen. "Our firepower calculations were definitely wrong! This thing's defensive capability is far more exaggerated than the Amarr Empire's eon-class!"

"Don't panic! If one round doesn't break it, then another! It's just a matter of more time and ammunition! Order all ships to accelerate main gun cooling and prepare for a second volley! Conventional fleets, push forward to pin down the enemy's peripheral vessels and don't let them interfere—"

Before his order was finished, the radar alarm suddenly blared!

"Warning! Large-scale enemy gathering detected! Bearing: directly ahead!"

Behind that pale-blue shield, the originally silent Kyushu Fleet moved.

With the Sky Fortress as the core, the massive peripheral conventional fleet began to change formation as if controlled by an invisible giant hand.

Then, the main gun muzzles of tens of thousands of Kyushu Cruisers and Battleships at the forefront of the formation lit up simultaneously.

That light was not pointed at the Empire's massive flagship clusters, but at the front of the Imperial conventional fleet that was currently trying to execute the pinning mission.

"That's—evade!" an experienced captain roared hoarsely.

But it was too late.

In the next instant, countless deep-blue beams, like a thunderstorm of lightning erupting from deep space, tore through the Void Realm.

They crisscrossed, covering the frontmost arrays of the Imperial conventional fleet and blocking all space for large-scale maneuvers.

"Boom! Boom boom boom—!"

The fire of explosions instantly bloomed on the front lines! Amarr's Apocalypse-class, Caldari's Scorpion-class, Minmatar's Tempest-class... these once-mighty warships were as fragile as paper in the face of such a dense, precise, and frighteningly high-energy volley.

Shields overloaded and shattered on contact, armor was easily torn apart, and hulls broke and disintegrated in chain explosions!

In just one round of volley, the front line of the Imperial Joint Fleet, with over three hundred capital ships of various types, was turned into burning wreckage.

"No!!!" The channel was filled with roars of shock and anger and the wretched screams of the dying.