453: There's no way out now.

The two steel mountains named "celebrated cloud" hung silently above the battlefield. The deep blue glow of their thrusters flickered like the breath of a leviathan from the abyss.

Their very existence was enough to dim the starlight in that region. Before their immense mass, space-time had already begun to warp slightly.

The initial terrified screams in the allied fleet channel, which had nearly shattered vocal cords and the limits of thought, were replaced seconds later by a silence mixed with despair and madness.

After the shock came the bone-chilling reality.

"Is that… a titan?"

The wreckage of three Dreadnoughts from the Amarr Empire and Caldari, smashed directly by the qingyun-class ships, was still slowly tumbling and cooling nearby, but the allied commanders could no longer afford to mourn.

They stared fixedly at the two absurdly massive energy signals on their sensors, and one word exploded in the minds of all the veteran officers.

titan—it was something that existed only in the top-secret research and development plans of the major powers, a term found only in theoretical projections and the fantasies of weapons research institutes.

It was the ultimate weapon, surpassing Dreadnoughts and supercarriers, possessing absolute dominion over a Star Domain.

However, the difficulty of research and manufacturing was too great; even the Amarr Empire and the Caldari State, which currently had the fastest progress, had only completed the design of the hull structure.

The good news was that titans were not just the fantasies of those mad scientists; they could truly exist.

The bad news was that this ultimate weapon was not theirs.

Jiuzhou not only had them, but they were also larger—much larger—than any "titan" any of them had envisioned.

One hundred kilometers? That was just the length measurable by the naked eye and optical instruments. Its actual mass, energy readings, and the weapon Systems it could carry were impossible to calculate.

Even by conservative estimates, its firepower Rank was higher than a military base built on a continent with an equivalent footprint.

As for how many orders of magnitude higher it was, that could only be determined by personal experience.

"How… how did they build them? Where were they built?" the Caldari fleet commander growled hoarsely.

He was one of the few versatile individuals among the Clone Pilots, having achieved high accomplishments in advanced technologies related to spacecraft.

For a technician like him, the sense of collapse when facing the incomprehensible was a double-edged sword.

It could ignite immense fighting spirit, or it could easily destroy one's mental pillars.

"Now is not the time to discuss this!" a Minmatar staff officer roared, pulling everyone's thoughts back to the cruel reality. "Look clearly! There are only two of them! Only two!"

"This is our only chance! The only chance! Before they crush us like bugs, before Jiuzhou fills the starry sky with these monsters, this is our only chance!"

"Concentrate all firepower! All of it! Take them down! Right here! Right now!"

"Destroy them, destroy Jiuzhou! Otherwise, there will be no place for us in New Eden! Our civilization, our history, everything we have will become just an exhibit in their museum! Or perhaps just dust!"

The sense of life-or-death crisis acted like the most potent stimulant, injected into the nearly broken bodies of the allied officers and soldiers.

The fear of the unknown giant was replaced by a primitive madness for survival.

"All Dreadnoughts! Lock onto targets! Target the enemy titan! Saturation attack! Don't worry about shields, don't worry about combat losses! Blast them for me!"

"Carrier formations! Launch all carrier-based aircraft! Create a window for the Dreadnoughts' volley!"

"The rest of the fleet, press forward at all costs!"

"For survival! For our New Eden! Attack!!!"

The allied fleet, which had previously fallen into chaos due to the minefield and the arrival of the qingyun-class, erupted at this moment with the ferocity of a dying beast.

Formations no longer mattered. Everyone, every cannon, every missile, every carrier-based aircraft, was pointed at the same target.

...

"Sharpening Sword" base command center.

"Detected enemy firepower priority shift. Target: qingyun-class ship number one." Mu Wan's report sounded, with the background noise of alarms indicating a massive-scale firepower lock-on.

"Energy reading analysis: approximately ninety enemy Dreadnoughts have completed main gun charging, targeting qingyun-class ship number one. Four supercarriers show abnormally high energy readings, and approximately four hundred thousand carrier-based aircraft are approaching rapidly."

On the main screen, the red beams and missile trajectories representing the allied firepower, like iron filings attracted to a magnet, surged frantically toward the giant blue dot representing qingyun-class ship number one.

Lin Yizhou watched the screen, his expression remained calm, though his eyes narrowed slightly.

"Record this: first combat test of the 'celebrated cloud'-class."

"Notify the pilots of Mighty Dragon and Yinglong to begin executing the 'Annihilation' protocol; authorization granted to use Doomsday-class flagship weapons."

"Also, have Yinglong deploy the gravitational interference field, covering an airspace with a radius of one hundred thousand kilometers centered on itself, focusing on disrupting the propulsion and Warp Engine cores of enemy Dreadnoughts and supercarriers."

"Order the conventional fleet to split and consume the enemy units according to the contingency plan."

"Yes!"

...

"Yinglong received. Fifteen thousand enemy signals locked, initiating ship-borne particle weapons. Mighty Dragon, you get to play with the Palm Thunder this time; you cover me next round."

"Fine, I'll leave the second shot for you."

On the main battlefield within the Osha Star Domain, the side of a qingyun-class hull opened like spreading wings, revealing countless neatly arranged firing ports shimmering with white light.

The next instant, a milky white river, over several kilometers wide and composed purely of ultra-high-density directional particle streams, surged out from the side of the hull!

No, to be more accurate, it was a wave covering the coastline, a continuous tide, washing over the battlefield.

In that region, tens of thousands of allied ships charging forward were vaporized silently the moment they touched the tide, before they could even explode.

A few cruisers that had charged too far forward saw their shields vanish like dew under the sun, their hulls rapidly melting and stripping away under the wash of the particle stream, eventually turning into elementary particles and disappearing into the tide.

This single sweep alone bought Mighty Dragon a crucial dozen or so seconds.

Meanwhile, an invisible gravitational fluctuation erupted from the core of the qingyun-class ship piloted by Yinglong!

Within a radius of one hundred thousand kilometers, almost the entire battlefield's space froze.

It wasn't a true freezing, but rather all allied ships within this range felt a chaotic gravitational force tearing at their hulls.

Although in terms of intensity, it was no different from being hit by stones as far as the hull armor was concerned, it was enough to completely crash the Warp Engines.

Not only that, the thrust of conventional engines was severely weakened, and the maneuverability of the ships became sluggish and clumsy, as if struggling in glue.

"Gravitational interference field deployed. Enemy large unit mobility reduced by 65%, energy System stability reduced by 40%."

"Conventional fleet, begin the cut-in."

The Jiuzhou conventional fleet, which had been suppressed by the allied forces' overwhelming numbers, now, like sharks smelling blood, pounced from all directions upon the allied ships struggling in the gravitational quagmire.