145: Chapter 149 This Fog Only Kills Aliens

A deep red, map-wide 'Most Wanted' banner flashed at high frequency on the radars of all surviving civilizations.

The spatial coordinates of the battle axe frigate were completely exposed.

Above the Central Lighthouse base, from which the High-Dimensional Crystal had been forcibly stripped, violent spatial jump ripples began to explode in clusters.

The first to jump out of the Warp were several Scavenger Fleets closest to the central competition zone.

Following closely behind were the High-Tier Heavy Armored Battleship formations that had been hiding at the edge of the poison circle to preserve their strength.

Over a hundred and seventy starships, painted with various civilization emblems, crowded into an airtight 'iron bucket' formation within this airspace of less than a thousand square kilometers.

The main gun matrices of all ships were preheating.

The sounds of high-energy particle beams and live-fire torpedoes loading converged into a suffocating death noise on the public frequency.

Li Cang didn't look at the red dots that were about to burst the radar.

His gaze was fixed firmly on the civilization forge interface in the cockpit.

The golden High-Dimensional Crystal, just forcibly plucked from the top of the lighthouse, was suspended above the forge's virtual flames.

[Detected Battle Royale core authority substance.]

[Forced smelting will trigger a backlash from the competition zone rules.]

[Countdown: One hundred and eighty seconds.]

Three minutes.

This was the minimum time given by the system to forcibly digest the crystal.

It was also the deadline by which the battle axe frigate had to endure the map-wide concentrated fire net.

Li Cang pushed all the underlying blast door locking commands of the battle axe frigate to the limit.

"Push the defensive line to the outermost edge of the lighthouse base's circular platform."

The command slammed directly into the fourteen Astartes recruits who had just fought their way through the authority room via the communication frequency.

"In these three minutes, if anyone dares to take half a step across the outer broken bridge, I'll strip their bones and mix them into the lubricant."

Recruit Number One did not reply.

He led the remaining thirteen iron giants, jumping directly down the damaged elevator shaft of the lighthouse base to the lowermost circular defense belt.

As soon as they landed, the first wave of exploratory fire slammed down.

It was a cluster of several hundred hovering plasma drones released by a Machine Ascension Civilization.

A dense rain of blue light poured down like a storm onto the base terrace that had already been cracked by the battle axe frigate's impact.

Recruit Number Eight held the front line.

The layer of grayish-black Mutant Swamp Shield covered the ship's hull; the base platform had no protection.

High-frequency plasma beams hit his pure black masterwork armor directly.

The ceramic matrix of the shoulder guards instantly burst under the three-thousand-degree heat.

The smell of molten metal mixed with scorched flesh and bone scattered in the vacuum.

Number Eight did not retreat.

He raised his heavy Electromagnetic Bolter; the stock bumped against a charred, mangled wound on his left chest during the motion, but he still pulled the trigger steadily.

Boom.

A cluster of high-explosive depleted uranium warheads exploded in the very center of the drone swarm.

A powerful electromagnetic pulse, mixed with physical shrapnel, tore over a dozen drones directly into flaming scrap metal.

This kind of attack could only delay the enemy's advance for less than a second.

The second wave of heavy firepower followed immediately.

The main guns of those High-Tier Heavy Armored Battleships fired.

Physical armor-piercing shells over ten meters in diameter and high-frequency lasers crisscrossed, slamming hard into the dilapidated base.

The entire lower half of the Central Lighthouse trembled violently.

Large chunks of floating alloy were blown apart and peeled off like tofu.

Fourteenth Recruit set up the Melta Cannon he had dragged out of the ship behind a collapsed cover.

Before he could finish charging, a near-miss high-explosive shell detonated less than three meters from his side.

The terrifying shockwave sent the half-ton giant flying.

He forcibly twisted his waist in mid-air, his only remaining Power Claw on his left arm gripping the edge of a steel plate about to peel off.

Hydraulic motors emitted a piercing roar as if they were about to snap; he hung off the edge of the base, his lower body exposed to the vacuum.

Two alien scout mechs, taking advantage of the chaos to sneak up, spotted this target and charged directly with high-frequency ion blades drawn.

Fourteenth Recruit did not try to climb up.

His only remaining right hand held the Melta Cannon perfectly level, the muzzle pressed against the edge of his own combat boot.

He pulled the trigger.

A blinding white pillar of melta fire burned straight through his own boot armor, vaporizing the two scout mechs that had just rushed below into two clouds of white smoke.

Tragic exchanges of this level were happening every second on the defensive line.

The Astartes made no move to call for support.

They simply pulled triggers mechanically, swung Chainswords, and used their constantly diminishing bodies of flesh and blood to hold the line at the blast-damaged gap that could collapse at any moment.

The countdown numbers in the cockpit were jumping rapidly.

[Remaining Time: Sixty seconds.]

The outer layer of the battle axe frigate's Mutant Swamp Shield had begun to thin and glow under the main gun fire pouring in from all directions.

Extreme physical friction accumulated too much heat within the shield, and the shredded shell wreckage piled up inside into an extremely ugly layer of high-temperature slag.

Li Cang didn't look at the skyrocketing battle damage.

His eyes were locked onto the High-Dimensional Crystal gradually melting in the forge, his knuckles turning white from pressing too hard on the console.

[Remaining Time: Thirty seconds.]

The hundred and seventy-plus starships on the periphery seemed to sense that some high-tier authority was being slowly handed over.

They gave up their mutual wariness.

All main gun arrays completed absolute synchronous preheating at this moment.

It was a lethal barrage net sufficient to completely melt through this space.

[Remaining Time: Ten seconds.]

Recruit Number Eight's left side had been roasted into a mummy by a near-miss high-frequency light spear; he gripped his Chainsword, which had only half its teeth left, with his remaining hand.

The barrel of the Bolter in Recruit Number One's hand had melted; he used the hundred-pound scrap gun as a counterweight for his Chainsword, violently smashing away a high-tier silicon-based lifeform that had rushed onto the base.

The defensive line was about to be submerged by a tide-like assault force.

[Remaining Time: Three.]

[Two.]

[One.]

[Smelting complete.]

[Obtained Dark Gold Grade Authority Card: Dark Void Domain (Mutated).]

[Trait: Strips the core power supply of the Battle Royale system, converting it into a potent corrosive and physical suppression black mist covering the surrounding 30,000 kilometers of star territory.]

[All reconnaissance, propulsion, and psionic systems within the domain, except for the caster's, will suffer rapid rust-lock by Warhammer physical laws.]

[Evaluation: You have burned the sacred competition tower into a man-eating mass grave.]

Li Cang didn't even look at the detailed patterns on this card.

He slammed it directly into the domain trigger slot of the main console.

"All recruits, retreat into the battle axe frigate's airlock."

In the same microsecond the command was issued.

From the empty top authority room of the Central Lighthouse, a deep, muffled sound like the dry heave of an abyssal beast suddenly erupted.

It wasn't light.

It was a viscous black mist that almost appeared in liquid form.

The black mist spread at a posture far exceeding the speed of light, instantly bursting through the lighthouse base and covering the entire 30,000-kilometer radius core combat airspace within tenths of a second.

The hundred and seventy-plus starships preparing to fire simultaneously were all swallowed by this dense blackness.

The entire competition zone fell into absolute silence in an instant.

The high-energy plasma beams that had just been spat out from the muzzles, upon touching the black mist, were like candles drained of energy, directly extinguished into a wisp of blue smoke.

The composite deflector shields the alien fleets were so proud of began to emit extremely shrill alarm sounds.

The black mist didn't just obscure vision.

This thing possessed a bizarre dual trait of physical corrosion and data dead-lock.

Less than two seconds after the optical probes of several Light Feather Frigates in the front row touched the black mist, a thick layer of rust grew directly on the lens surfaces.

After inhaling this mist, countless tiny bearings within the internal precision high-speed gravity engines jammed simultaneously.

The mobility of the entire fleet directly dropped to zero within this layer of black mist.

The battle axe frigate stopped quietly in the very center of its own domain.

Li Cang casually withdrew the grayish-black swamp shield, which was full of craters and slag.

Within these 30,000 kilometers of black mist, he didn't need a shield.

He connected to the base of those three extremely thick Star-Shattering Macro-cannon arrays that were emitting the smell of sulfur and gunpowder.

The locking cursor on the console was no longer a flashing warning, but had become a unilateral execution list.

"Position one, load high-explosive armor-piercing shells."

"Lock onto the chassis of The Machine Ascension Cruiser directly ahead."

Li Cang pushed the firing lever down heavily.

These primitive cannons, which couldn't even penetrate high-level shields outside the black mist...

...now became the only Grim Reapers in this graveyard for the blind.

Boom.

The solid high-explosive warhead tore a straight shock channel through the black mist.

The Machine Ascension Cruiser, its engine jammed and its shield severely corroded, took this shell—the size of a large truck—head-on like an immobile sandbag.

After a crisp crack.

The Cruiser's keel snapped right down the middle, the reactor was detonated, and the light of the explosion flashed once in the black mist before being quickly swallowed by that darkness again.

System settlement prompts jumped silently on the cockpit screen.

This was an undisguised unilateral targeted slaughter.

Within thirty seconds, the Macro-cannon arrays of the battle axe frigate roared continuously.

With every shot, a ship famous in some star system turned into a pile of rusted scrap metal deep in the black mist.

Those high-tier fleets lucky enough not to be named in the first round frantically called for help in the channel and tried blind jump-warping.

But space had long been locked tight by this bizarre mutated power.

They could only listen as the muffled sound of the giant cannons drew closer and closer.

Li Cang paid no attention to the pleas and curses in the channel.

His fingers tapped rhythmically on the edge of the console, watching the numbers in the points column roll upward at an extremely exaggerated speed.

When the last peripheral interceptor had its command tower blown apart by a Macro-cannon shell...

...on the holographic radar screen, only a pile of grey coordinates representing loot crates remained of the dense red dots.

This wave of encirclement in the Battle Royale's center circle had been completely devoured by this black mist.

Li Cang was just about to order the Astartes out to clean up the battlefield.

At the extreme right edge of the radar panel, the limit of the scanning net.

A sickly green light point without any outline suddenly popped up without warning.

The light point hadn't warped in from the Warp; it was as if it had been there all along, only just waking from a slumber.

That sickly green light point was extremely massive—so massive that the system couldn't even provide specific mass data for it.

Next.

The 30,000-kilometer range of absolute control black mist, on the side where the green dot appeared...

...was like a piece of thin paper being violently torn.

An abyssal-class giant anti-aircraft gun barrel, emitting an extremely eerie green light and covered in eyeballs and irregular metal structures, slowly poked a large hole through it.

This was not a competing civilization.

This was the Final Liquidator in the Battle Royale's final circle, awakened by this black mist and slaughter.