132: Chapter 132 They've caught up!

Fourteen massive warships aggressively bore down upon them.

“Listen up, human warship ahead!”

On the flagship of the fleet, Jasper's arrogant and gruff voice echoed across the entire airspace through the high-frequency public channel:

“I am the commander of the Blood Moon Guild's Gray Wolf Fleet! Release your weapon locks immediately, and hand over control of the fortress, the resources on the island, and all the human women inside! If I'm in a good mood today, I might even leave you with intact corpses!”

Just then, the flagship's optical scanner zoomed in, and Jasper clearly saw two white figures standing on the fortress's open-air combat platform on his screen.

He was stunned for a moment, then burst into roaring laughter:

“Hahaha! No wonder I couldn't find those two broken-stringed kites; so you were hiding here! You two winged bird-people, you can't run! Today, both of you will obediently crawl into my bed to be my bed-warming slaves!”

Faced with the orc's incredibly arrogant provocation, Ivy and Sheila gripped their weapons tightly on the combat platform of the [Cloud Top Fortress], trembling with rage.

“A bunch of barking mongrels. You dare try to rob my island with just these dozen-odd pieces of scrap metal?”

Zhou An's voice rang out in the communication channel.

“EVA. Show them what firepower-deficiency phobia means.”

“Command received. Cloud Top Fortress, weapon modules fully deploying.”

Rumble—!

Dozens of heavy turrets radiating terrifying energy fluctuations slowly rose.

Especially the main cannon in the center of the fortress, which was a Dual-rail Cannon modified by Luo Ning. The slender dual-rail barrels began frantically absorbing the surrounding free psionic energy. Dazzling electric arcs danced wildly at the muzzle, emitting a suffocating aura of destruction!

“Warning! High-energy reaction detected!!”

The radar operator of the Gray Wolf Fleet cried out in terror as he looked at the off-the-charts readings on his screen.

“What's the panic! They only have one ship, and charging their main cannon takes time! Focus fire on—”

Before Jasper could even finish his sentence...

“Boom!!!”

Without any warning, and before anyone could even see the trajectory of the energy beam, an LV4 heavy escort ship on the left flank of the Gray Wolf Fleet—along with its sturdy outer Blood Moon Shield—instantly turned into a brilliant, massive fireball!

No one, including Jasper, had any idea where this lethal attack had come from.

In the next second, amidst the fiery light of the explosion, space rippled like water. A mecha slowly emerged from its optical cloaking state.

The tens-of-meters-long light blade in Luo Ning's hand was sizzling, dripping molten metal. The engines on her back spewed violent, eerie blue flames, making her look like a true Valkyrie.

Standing on the platform, Ivy and Sheila were completely dumbfounded.

They had thought that Luo Ning, who had drawn their blood, was just a helpless researcher. Who could have imagined that once she got into a mecha, she would be even more brutal than the most bloodthirsty orcs!

“What are you staring at, you two little birds!”

Luo Ning's voice, tinged with excitement and playfulness, rang out in the channel: “Leave those big toys to us! Do you see those escape pods and surviving orcs falling from the exploding warship? Go! Use your weapons to pick them off one by one! Leave no survivors!”

Hearing Luo Ning's command, Ivy and Sheila snapped out of their daze, the fear in their eyes completely replaced by the fury of revenge.

“Kill!”

The pure white wings on the backs of the two girls suddenly flared, and they transformed into two streaks of light soaring into the sky. Their spears and electromagnetic heavy sniper rifles began a merciless, one-sided slaughter.

“Bastards! Shoot down that mecha first! Focus all firepower on that flagship! Blast them to pieces!”

Jasper's eyes nearly split from rage as he roared in exasperation.

Countless thick energy beams and anti-aircraft missiles wove into an airtight net of firepower, pouring frantically toward Luo Ning and the fortress.

However, Zhou An was already hovering in the air like a ghost, less than a hundred meters above the Gray Wolf flagship.

He looked down at the heavily guarded flagship command center.

“The same trick is always exceptionally effective against fools.”

“space warp. Target: Command hall directly below.”

Hum—

Inside the flagship's command center.

Jasper was pressing his hands on the command console, roaring at the top of his lungs to adjust their formation. The entire hall was in chaos, with radar operators and adjutants frantically operating their instruments.

Just then, the air in the very center of the command room suddenly warped eerily.

A dark golden rift appeared out of thin air!

“What is that?!”

The adjutant turned his head in horror.

There was no nonsense, nor any time given to them to react.

A young man wearing black tactical gear stepped directly out of the rift, entering the very heart of the heavily guarded enemy forces!

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Rapid and extremely precise gunshots suddenly rang out!

Zhou An held a pistol in his left hand. Without even looking, his arm swung continuously like a precise machine.

Special armor-piercing bullets instantly pierced the foreheads of those radar operators and adjutants, bursting into dazzling splashes of blood!

This all happened too quickly—so fast that it took less than a second.

Only when the gunshots ceased did several tall orc corpses thud heavily onto the metal floor.

The massive command room instantly fell into a dead silence.

Jasper turned around stiffly. His deep green pupils reflected the corpses littered across the floor, as well as the human youth standing in their midst. Cold sweat instantly drenched the back of the Gray Wolf commander.

“M-My Lord! Don't shoot! We can talk this out!”

With Zhou An pointing the gun right between his brows, Jasper's massive body trembled violently.

He raised his hands high, his knees buckling as he knelt with a thud in the pool of blood, his face filled with terror and sycophancy.

“I surrender! I know a lot of intelligence! This ship, the resources we plundered, the women—they are all yours! As long as you spare my—”

Swoosh—!

Before Jasper could finish his plea for mercy, his massive kneeling body lunged forward like a sudden, vicious wolf. A high-frequency vibration dagger coated in deadly poison shot out from the sleeve hidden behind his back, slicing through the air straight toward Zhou An's throat!

The cunning and bloodlust inherent in the orc race were fully on display at this moment.

Yet, not even a trace of surprise appeared in Zhou An's pitch-black eyes.

“Too slow.”

“Bang!”

Zhou An didn't even bother to dodge the incoming dagger.

The enemy's movements were as slow as a snail in his eyes. Striking second but arriving first, he shoved the muzzle of his custom pistol directly into Jasper's wide-open maw and pulled the trigger without hesitation!

A muffled gunshot exploded inside Jasper's mouth.

The special armor-piercing bullet, carrying violent kinetic energy, directly blew off half of the Gray Wolf commander's hindbrain!

Even a Tier 5 physical body would find it hard to withstand an armor-piercing bullet exploding inside their mouth.

Jasper's deep green pupils instantly dilated. His massive body, as if drained of all strength, crashed heavily onto the floor, and the poisoned dagger slipped from his grip with a clatter.

“Even worse than the trash from the last batch.”

Zhou An cast a cold glance at the corpse on the floor and casually holstered his pistol back at his waist.

With Jasper's death and the destruction of the command console, this Level 5 flagship instantly lost all power and command signals. The Blood Moon Shield on the hull flickered violently a few times before shattering, and the entire warship began to tilt and plunge downward uncontrollably.

The flagship's sudden loss of control and the shattering of its shield instantly caused massive panic among the rest of the Gray Wolf Fleet outside.

“The flagship has fallen! The commander is dead!”

“That monster is on our flagship! Retreat, fast!”

However, in this airspace completely locked down by [Cloud Top Fortress], retreating was nothing but a pipe dream.

By now, Luo Ning had gone completely wild with her killing spree.

“Why are you running? This lady hasn't finished dumping her energy yet! Stay here, all of you!”

Luo Ning's laugh, excited to the point of near-madness, echoed in the public channel. Her back thrusters were at full throttle, and the light blade in her hand drew a hundred-meter-long arc of death.

She was pouring out ammunition frantically, completely regardless of cost.

The micro anti-armor missiles on the mecha's shoulders poured like a rainstorm onto another warship. Under such a luxurious saturation strike, that warship's shield collapsed in less than five seconds.

“Boom—!”

With a fierce mid-air downward slash, Luo Ning's massive light blade cleaved the shieldless warship in half from bow to stern. The violent energy explosion dragged several surrounding escort ships into the sea of fire as well.

At the same time, Cloud Top Fortress's Dual-rail Cannon let out a deafening roar, an energy beam directly piercing through three orc assault ships lined up in a row. Tens of thousands of 'Hornet' drones swarmed the remaining enemy ships like locusts, performing kamikaze strikes.

In less than five minutes, this once-menacing Gray Wolf Fleet was completely dismantled, turning into burning wreckage scattered across the sky.

“Truly weak beyond belief.”

Inside the flagship's command room, Zhou An was about to reactivate his space warp to return to the a70 fighter when a faint whimpering suddenly reached his ears.

He stopped, his gaze sweeping past a row of collapsed metal cabinets. Only then did he discover that in a huge iron cage at the back of the command room, there were actually over a dozen Winged girls huddled together, bound by thick, heavy chains.

Some had their wings brutally broken, and some even had bloody holes on their backs where feathers had just been violently ripped out. Clad in rags, they trembled in the tilting cabin, staring at Zhou An, this blood-drenched 'god of death'.

Looking at these miserable demi-humans, Zhou An frowned slightly.

“Consider yourselves lucky. Since I ran into you, I might as well see this through to the end.”

Zhou An stepped forward and crushed those sturdy pig-iron chains one by one with his bare hands.

Then, holding two screaming Winged girls with one hand, he walked over to the shattered, massive window of the command room and threw them directly out from an altitude of ten thousand meters like sacks of potatoes!

“Aaaah!!!”

The Winged girls thrown out of the cabin screamed in despair as they plummeted.

“EVA, send tractor ships over to pick them up.”

Zhou An gave a calm instruction over the comms.

In the next second, several flat fortress engineering ships quickly emerged from the clouds. The eerie blue tractor beams from their underbellies precisely enveloped the falling Winged girls, steadily drawing them into the cabins.

Zhou An followed suit, throwing out all the living Winged people in the cage one by one. Once he ensured they were safely taken over by EVA, his figure flashed, and he warped back to the fighter.

Meanwhile, Ivy and Sheila, who were cleaning up the stragglers outside, also saw their compatriots being rescued by the engineering ships.

When they clearly saw their compatriots' mangled wings and blood-stained bodies, and when they saw several orc officers who had parachuted to escape wearing bloody coats woven from their people's feathers, the eyes of the two Winged girls instantly turned blood-red!

“Beasts... You beasts!!!”

The barrel of Sheila's heavy sniper rifle had even turned red from overloaded firing.

Like an untiring grim reaper, she blew up the orcs trying to escape in their escape pods one by one in mid-air.

Under her and Ivy's frantic venting, not a single soul from this Red Moon Fleet was left alive.

...

Half an hour later, the battle completely subsided.

Zhou An hovered in mid-air, having already completely disassembled all the warships.

“Though their combat strength was a bit pathetic, their wealth is quite substantial.”

Zhou An glanced at the loot list compiled by the system. Aside from a massive amount of basic Tier 5 resources, what satisfied him the most was salvaging two complete five-source power cores from the destroyed warships.

“Just in time, the upgrade materials for Shen Xingyue and Old Zhang are complete as well.”

Zhou An closed the panel and pulled down the control lever in high spirits.

“Let's go, head back.”