149: Chapter 153 Using hilltops as cover and the Earth's core as a slot

In this dead star system composed of three abandoned mining stars and an aging star, the coordinates received their first wave of 'inspectors' just three minutes after Li Cang pressed the full-band broadcast transmit key.

The holographic radar panel did not show the chaotic ripples typical of a Warp jump.

Instead, it displayed dozens of extremely neat, cold, reflective blue Warp light pillars.

Forty-two medium heavy gunships and one escort-clearance vessel, which functioned as both a command ship and a carrier, simultaneously completed physical anchoring in a synchronous orbit less than fifty thousand kilometers from Mining Planet No. 3.

This was a Scavenger Mercenary Fleet specifically used for dirty work on the interstellar map.

They bore no insignia of any formal governing power, but the freshly painted high-grade armor plates on their hulls clearly indicated they had the financial backing of a big shot from the Dark Red Star Zone.

The mercenary fleet's main guns did not preheat.

The opposing Commander didn't consider this assembled frigate, which had just crawled out of the station ruins and was covered in disgusting fleshy buds, to be an opponent of the same level.

A string of machine-synthesized voices on an encrypted frequency forcibly hacked into the underlying communication array of the battle axe frigate.

"Withdraw from the current star system coordinates."

"Unload all data cores and material resources stolen from Observation Station No. 7."

"This fleet will mercifully allow you to keep this junk ship as an escape pod; otherwise, we will begin physical salvage procedures."

Li Cang didn't even touch the close button on the communication panel.

He glanced at the arrogant heavy fleet hovering in space.

His finger switched directly to the cursor on the other side of the cockpit representing [Mining Star Restructuring Project].

Forty-two versus one.

If he took the battle axe frigate into a naval battle, even if the biological armor on the outside could hold, the engine overload would drag them to death.

The one thing this sector did not lack was dead, silent mining stars like the one beneath his feet, showing no signs of life.

"First Company, take fifty men down."

The command slammed into the ears of the Astartes Recruits in the lower hold, who had just donned their black armor, via bone-conduction channels.

"Excavate that ring-shaped dormant volcano on the equator of Mining Planet No. 3 for me."

Without any mobilization or explanation, the engineering order Li Cang issued was even more brutal than a call to war.

Fifty Astartes were ejected directly from the airlock.

Under the planet's weak gravity, they slammed hard onto the summit of the dormant volcano, which was riddled with holes from over-mining.

There was no advanced engineering machinery here.

Only the purest physical strength and Warhammer-style high-frequency chain-saws.

The recruits activated their power armor's maximum overload output, and dark red light flashed wildly through the gaps in their black armor.

Dozens of high-frequency Chainswords were simultaneously thrust into the hard Basaltic Volcanic Rock Shell.

Terrifying physical vibrations were conducted through the mountain all the way to the depths of the planetary core.

Millions of tons of rock shattered under the high-speed cutting of the chain-saws, turning into clouds of dust and rubble that drifted into low-gravity space.

In less than ten minutes.

That dormant ring volcano, thousands of meters high, was forcibly cut in half by this group of power-armored bulldozers, carving out a massive, level platform.

At the same time, Li Cang activated the remote towing mode of the [civilization forge].

The wreckage of the Observer-7 station, which had just been smashed by the battle axe frigate, was pulled directly toward Mining Planet No. 3 by the system's brutal gravitational tractor beam.

Thousands of tons of premium composite alloys, high-energy transmission pipelines, and the corpses of those dead semi-mechanical guards smashed into the newly leveled crater like a black meteor shower.

Li Cang's hand hovered over the [Fuse] button on the console.

He was going to cast this mountain peak directly into a gun mount.

In space.

The Commander of the Scavenger Mercenary Fleet watched this extremely abnormal physical stripping phenomenon on the radar.

The mercenary leader, whose body was covered in tentacles, gave a cold snort in the command tower.

"Insolent natives."

"Formation disperse, main guns charge. Burn the surface of that mining star along with that scrap ship to cinders."

The muzzles of the forty-two heavy gunships began to glow with a blinding high-energy blue light.

These people didn't even bother to aim; they intended to use the densest fire net to carry out direct blanket evaporation.

Li Cang didn't look at the skyrocketing fire warnings.

His left hand clicked the crucible's fusion key.

His right hand pulled a trump card directly from the tactical card slot—one that had mutated during the Battle Royale settlement.

[Dark Void Domain Card].

This card was originally a weapon used to cover the area around a warship for close-quarters defense.

Li Cang did not apply it to the battle axe frigate.

He remotely controlled an Ultra-heavy Drilling Servitor that had just been salvaged from the station ruins.

Carrying that purple-and-black card, which emitted an extremely ominous aura, the Servitor drilled along the main fissure of the crater cut by the Astartes, heading all the way into the depths of Mining Planet No. 3's long-cooled, abandoned core.

"Card inserted." The low-level temperature warning flashed in the cockpit.

Li Cang directly maxed out the magnetic field deflection rate of this dead star.

He used the entire planet as an infinitely magnified physical slot.

"Mist rise."

The first wave of high-energy plasma fire from the mercenary fleet had just left their barrels.

Those hundreds of blue light pillars, sufficient to burn a crater into the mining star's surface, hadn't even traveled half the distance.

The crust of Mining Planet No. 3 suddenly erupted with a massive, muffled sound like the wailing of ghosts.

Boundless, physical black mist billowed out from the crater and the countless mining fissures on the surface.

This mutated black mist, amplified by the magnetic field of the entire planet, was more than a hundred times larger in concentration and scope than it had been during the Battle Royale.

The black mist swallowed Mining Planet No. 3 at the speed of light and spread the warning net all the way to the synchronous orbit one hundred thousand kilometers away in space.

The forty-two mercenary warships were instantly plunged into absolute darkness.

Those high-energy plasma beams that were halfway there directly disintegrated into harmless blue powder upon contact with the black mist, which carried extreme physical corrosion and rule-locking properties.

On the mercenary Commander's massive escort-clearance ship, all precision optical probes and gravity radars were covered in a thick layer of dark red rust within two seconds.

"Warning! Engine bearings jammed!"

"Neural interface link failed; fire control system cannot respond to energy storage requests!"

The command tower was in total chaos. The tentacled mercenary leader frantically hammered at the smoking console. His ship's proud composite shields had completely crashed in the black mist without even causing a ripple.

This fleet was transformed in an instant from aggressive scavengers into blind and deaf cripples, unable to move within the black mist.

On Mining Planet No. 3, atop the leveled dormant volcano.

Li Cang's [civilization forge] forcibly ended its cooling countdown.

The station scrap, high-grade alloys, and corpses filled into the crater...

...were violently kneaded together in golden-red flames.

They became three extreme-sized solid Macro-cannons, far too large to be mounted on any starship.

The caliber of the barrels was large enough to fit a small frigate, and the thick, long gun bodies, covered in explosion-proof rivets, were slanted directly into the solidified volcanic rock shell.

These weren't even considered giant weapons anymore; they were three solid metal mountains cast from steel.

A Planetary Defense Battery of the Warhammer system, born from a violent fusion devoid of any engineering aesthetics, took root.

The remaining sixty-plus Astartes Recruits were already in position in the ammunition pits at the bottom of the crater.

Li Cang hadn't built an automatic loading servo mechanism system.

Such delicate things would also rust and jam their gears in the black mist field.

He only trusted the violent muscles of the Astartes, fed by high-dimensional flesh and blood.

Sixty black giants used thick adamantite chains to drag oversized solid shells, temporary pressed from waste ore and high explosives.

Amidst earth-shaking roars, they used their physical bodies to forcibly push the heavy projectiles into the breeches of those terrifying giant cannons.

"Targeting complete. Those blind fools are all stationary."

The data returned by the radar was as clear as a fixed target. Sitting in the cockpit, Li Cang's right hand tightly gripped the master switch representing the activation of the Planetary Defense Battery.

No electronic preheating.

No power charging.

"Let's give them something to hear."

The switch was slammed down.

The primers of the three crater-sized Macro-cannons detonated simultaneously.

The entire northern hemisphere of Mining Planet No. 3 underwent a violent geological collapse under this incalculable physical recoil.

The entire modified dormant volcano erupted once more.

Only this time, it wasn't magma that spewed out.

They were three solid metal monsters carrying millions of tons of kinetic energy and sulfurous flames.

They tore through the heavy black mist, their physical mass causing the vacuum to ripple with distortion as they smashed into the center of the mercenary fleet's paralyzed formation with an all-crushing posture.

There was no need for precise carpet bombing.

After the first shell shattered the keels of three heavy frigates, a violent delayed high-explosive blast occurred at its center.

The blasted metal armor plates turned into a storm of shrapnel.

The mercenary warships, their shields down, were like glass toys struck by a sledgehammer in this physical storm.

Explosions chained together.

The forty-two warships didn't even manage to send out a distress signal before being torn into a sky full of burning wreckage by this most barbaric planetary defense fire.

Li Cang cut off the secondary loading command for the cannons.

The black mist dissipated slightly.

The flaming wreckage in space drifted slowly, beginning to be captured by the gravity of Mining Planet No. 3.

The system was calculating the resource data brought by these mercenaries.

But Li Cang didn't check the accounts.

He stood before the panoramic monitor of the cockpit, his gaze fixed on the extreme far end of the radar in the direction of the Dark Red Star Zone.

Deep in that star region, which had been completely cleared by the annihilation of the mercenary fleet...

...an extremely tiny, dark-gold cross cursor, whose dimensional level was so high it caused the system's red warning boxes to display garbled code, lit up silently.

That wasn't an errand-running scavenger.

That was a high-level existence that truly ruled this sector, thoroughly enraged by the commotion of this barbaric home-wrecking and now personally taking the field.