109: Fireworks Show

Soon, the once-silent star orbit of the S-92 Galaxy turned into a bustling super construction site.

For the Faleim Scientific Conglomerate, building a starbase was merely a standardized operation in their expansion process.

The intelligent liquid metal released by the construction ships wove a magnificent space fortress around the key nodes of the star's gravity well at a dazzling speed.

The massive ring-shaped skeleton shimmered under the radiance of the star. Every armor plate was seamlessly joined, a silent yet firm declaration of sovereignty over this galaxy.

On the surface of the third planet, however, the atmosphere was suffocatingly oppressive.

To "take care of" those guests who refused to communicate, the Faleim People deployed dozens of gravity interference generators and wide-area communication shielding satellites in the planet's synchronous orbit.

The Angel people on the ground soon discovered with horror that their prized wings and flight spells had failed.

Whenever they tried to take flight, as long as the altitude exceeded five meters, an invisible yet terrifying gravitational field would act like an unseen giant hand, ruthlessly pressing them back to the ground.

Even Amira Radiance, who possessed six wings, would have her bones creak under the pressure after forcibly flying to a height of ten meters, forcing her to land in a sorry state.

What made them even more desperate was that not only could they not fly, but their voices could not be transmitted either.

The psionic amplification communication tower on the grace vessel, which could once contact the home planet across the spiral arm, could now not even receive a hint of static, as if the entire universe were dead.

"This is just a petty trick."

On the bridge of the grace vessel, although Amira Radiance's face was pale, she still maintained an arrogant posture.

She looked at the invisible shackles shrouding the sky outside the window and snorted coldly: "These are the usual tactics of those materialist heretics, using crude gravitational wave technology to create a cage. Do they think this can trap the children of God?"

"Pass the order down, speed up the repair progress of the psionic core! As long as the grace vessel can move, I only need one full-power engine output to tear open this level of blockade!"

In her perception, although the civilization above possessed decent space folding technology and perhaps some strange tricks, it was still vulnerable in front of the psionic technology that the Angel Empire had accumulated for tens of thousands of years.

This blind confidence lasted for three full months.

Three months later, as the last psionic crystal was recalibrated, the massive body of the grace vessel shook violently.

A dazzling golden beam of light shot up from the core of the warship; it was the mark of the psionic engine operating at full power.

"Praise the True God! Engine output at 120%! Anti-gravity field fully engaged!"

Amira stood on the command platform, her golden hair dancing wildly: "Lift off! Smash their blockade network! Let them see what true power is!"

The grace vessel let out a roar like a giant beast, and the massive hull tried to break free from the shackles of the earth under the effect of the anti-gravity field.

One meter, two meters, three meters...

However, just the moment the warship left the ground by five meters, the gravity interferers in the sky seemed to sense the resistance, and their power was automatically increased by three levels in an instant.

Hum—!

A low hum resonated across the heavens and earth.

The psionic shield that could barely hold on shattered instantly like a soap bubble under this sudden and terrifying pressure.

The ten-kilometer-long hull of the grace vessel let out a wail, and then smashed heavily back to the ground.

Boom!

The massive impact caused the surrounding rock layers to tremble, and the newly repaired engine pipes burst again, spraying out a large amount of golden plasma flow.

The bridge was in chaos.

After a while, Amira climbed up from the ground in a disheveled state, her face full of disbelief.

"This... this is impossible! Our engine output has already reached planetary level! How is it possible that we can't even get out of the atmosphere?!"

She finally began to feel panic.

"Captain... we... we seem to really be unable to get out." The adjutant's voice carried a hint of crying.

Amira bit her lip. She looked at the calm sky above her head, where a few silver streaks of light occasionally flashed by; those were the warships of the Faleim People patrolling.

That kind of disregard, that kind of indifference, made her feel even more humiliated than a direct attack.

"Hold the position!" She could only issue such a powerless order in the end, "As long as we are still here, God will not abandon us!"

However, God did not come.

But the demons arrived first.

...

Edge of the S-92 Galaxy.

Space shook violently like torn rags, and then a massive and ferocious fleet jumped out of warp space, filled with murderous intent.

It was the pursuit fleet of the Iofer Federation.

Five eight-kilometer-long battleships looked like moving black volcanoes, their hulls covered in sharp rams and dark red paint. Twenty heavy cruisers and eighty frigates surrounded them like stars around the moon, their muzzles emitting dangerous red light.

"I smell it... the scent of that guy."

On the bridge of the fleet flagship 【Tyrant】, the fleet commander Vakas took a deep breath with an exaggerated expression. His dark red face revealed a cruel smile, and the horns on his head flashed with cold light under the illumination.

"Report, Commander! A high-intensity psionic reaction was detected on the surface of the third planet! Confirmed to be the flagship of the Angel Empire's Divine Grace Fleet, the grace vessel!"

"Hahahaha! Finally caught this big fish!" Vakas laughed wildly, the bat wings behind him spreading out suddenly, "Full speed ahead! I want to personally tear off the wings of that bitch Amira and roast them for a meal!"

"Commander, wait!" The radar officer suddenly shouted, "There are other warship signals around the grace vessel!"

"Hmm?" Vakas glanced at the radar screen.

In the orbit of that planet, more than a dozen silver-white warships were floating sparsely. Most of them were similar in size to their battleships, but three warships that were three times the size of their battleships were unusually conspicuous.

Compared to the Iof People's dark red-style warships covered in armor plates and turrets, these silver-white spaceships looked like exquisite toys in the hands of nobles—smooth, slender, and lacking any deterrent power.

"What is this? Vassals of the Angel people? Hmph! No matter how big the warships of a low-level civilization are built, they can't withstand one of our cannon shots." Vakas asked with disdain.

"There is no matching information in the database. The opponent has no psionic reaction and has not sent out identification signals." The radar officer reported, "It looks like an unknown low-tech civilization."

"Hmph, probably just a shield found by those birdmen." Vakas waved his hand contemptuously, "No matter who they are, anyone who dares to block the path of the Iofer Federation fleet is garbage!"

"Pass the order down, ignore those toy ships, just rush over! If they dare to block the road, crush them along the way!"

...

S-92 Galaxy, high orbit of the third planet.

The flagship of the Falamt Detachment Fleet—inside the bridge of a cruiser that had arrived not long ago.

"Alert, a large number of unknown warships have been detected entering the galaxy."

The cold electronic voice of the shipboard AI rang out in the quiet command room.

The fleet commander was a young Faleim officer. He was holding a drink specialty of the home planet, looking at the aggressive iofer fleet rushing over on the screen, a look of confusion on his face.

"Is that reinforcements for the ship down there?" He asked the adjutant beside him.

"It doesn't seem to be, sir. The warship exterior style is completely different. According to the tachyons sensor scan, the opponent's technological level is at the conventional interstellar civilization stage. The main weapons are energy cannons and kinetic weapons. The shield strength is relatively low. As for armor materials, most are standard strength alloys with a small amount of strong interaction materials in key parts. It is highly likely that they cannot defend against phase attacks and dimensional attacks."

"The quantity is quite large, though." The commander took a sip of his drink, "Over a hundred ships, what do they want to do? They are getting closer. Issue a warning; do not let them cross the cordon."

The main guns of the falam warships began to charge, the hollow muzzles glowing with cold blue light, but the iofer fleet ignored it completely.

Even to make a show of force, an iofer battleship rushing at the very front fired directly at a frigate of the Faraim Fleet.

A thick beam of blaster cannon light tore through the void and accurately hit that Faraim frigate.

Vakas looked forward to seeing that beautiful silver warship explode into a ball of fireworks.

However, the fireworks did not appear.

That blaster beam, which was enough to melt through the crust, hit the dark matter deflector shield of the Faraim frigate like a drop of water falling on a red-hot iron plate; it disappeared without even causing a ripple.

That Faraim frigate, only eight kilometers long, didn't even sway.

"What?" Vakas's eyes almost popped out.

"Commander, since the opponent fired first, according to our engagement rules, we can consider this an act of war." The adjutant of the Faraim Fleet reminded him calmly.

"Then clean them up." The commander put down the drink cup, his tone as plain as if he were talking about cleaning up, "Don't let this garbage pollute the galaxy that the guide is paying attention to."

"All fleets, fire at will."

As the order was given, the Faraim Fleet, which had been in silence, finally bared its fangs.

When that attacked Faraim frigate deployed its weapon systems, the horror that belonged to a high-level civilization was truly revealed.

A slit opened at its bow, revealing the dark blue energy crystal inside.

Zzz—!

A Phase Disintegration Beam with almost no delay shot out instantly.

That iofer frigate, which had just been showing off, was neatly cut into two halves from the middle, shield and armor included, the moment it was swept by the beam.

The cut was as smooth as a mirror; there was no explosion and no fire, because the matter had been completely decomposed at the microscopic level, and the energy intensity instantly exceeded the limit that the constraint field generator could withstand, causing the strong interaction materials to collapse after holding on for one second under such an attack.

"What... what kind of weapon is this?" Vakas screamed in terror.

But this was just the beginning.

The three cruisers in the Faraim Fleet—in the definition of the Faleim People, the length of a cruiser is about thirty kilometers, but in the eyes of the Iof People, these were already super giant ships several times larger than their flagships.

They slowly turned their bows, revealing the densely packed cannons of various calibers and missile silos on both sides of the hull.

The Iof People's warships looked like clumsy dinosaurs facing a modern armed helicopter squadron in front of these silver reapers.

Their gravitational wave cannons couldn't penetrate the shields of the Faleim People, and their blaster cannons couldn't even scratch the skin of the Faleim People's ships.

And every counterattack by the Faleim People was devastating.

An iofer battleship tried to use its main gun to attack that Faleim cruiser, but it had one-third of its hull wiped away by a Phase Disintegration Beam from the opponent.

Then a dazzling blue-white light lit up, and that eight-kilometer-long steel beast instantly turned into a cloud of ions in the universe.

"This is impossible! This is impossible! What kind of weapon is this? How can there be such energy intensity?"

"Our shields are like paper in front of them!"

"Sir! The third squadron is completely wiped out! The fifth squadron is completely wiped out!"

What was most hair-raising was the movement method of those silver warships. These newly built, advanced warships were equipped with next-generation dark matter thrusters and Higgs field fluctuation cancellation devices. They could accelerate the warship to 99% speed of light in an instant, or reduce the speed to zero instantly, and could completely eliminate the inertia inside the ship, so that instantaneous acceleration and deceleration would not affect internal equipment and personnel.

So in the detection system of the Iof People, these silver-white giant ships appeared here one moment and there the next, like ghosts! This completely illogical maneuver method caused the brains of all the Iof People to crash.

Vakas's flagship, the Tyrant, was also in a desperate situation at this time. A Faraim frigate—yes, just a frigate—with its captain in a playful mood, advanced toward the Tyrant at a normal sub-light speed, and cut into its defensive circle at high speed while bearing all the secondary battery fire of the Tyrant.

That giant ship, similar in size to the Tyrant, wove through the dense barrage with incredible agility, and even flew past the Tyrant's armor plates head-on against its continuous artillery fire.

A purple beam extended from the flank of the Faraim frigate; it was a dimensional cutting beam.

Just like a hot knife cutting through butter, Vakas watched helplessly as his prized flagship was sliced open from the middle by that silver warship like gutting a fish.

His final view was the elegant blue tail flame emitted from the stern of that silver warship, and the logo of the Faleim Civilization that appeared incredibly clear even in space.

"Low... level... civilization...?"

This was the last thought Vakas left in this universe.

...

On the ground.

Amira Radiance and her crew looked up at the sky, dumbfounded.

Because of the thin atmosphere, their psionically enhanced vision could only barely see the warship styles of both sides fighting in space, but they could clearly see the flashes of explosions that lit up one after another.

Each flash represented the fall of an iofer warship, just like a giant fireworks show in space.

That powerful demon fleet that once chased them to the point of having no way to the sky and no door to the ground, in front of the civilization named the Falaim Scientific Integration Nation, didn't even last for two hours—and most of these two hours were the time it took for the beams and shells to fly in space.

It was a complete crushing, a dimensionality reduction strike by a high-level civilization against mortals.

When the last spark went out, the sky returned to calm, leaving only those silver-white warships floating there coldly, as if they had just casually swatted a few flies.

Amira Radiance's body trembled a few times, a feeling of horror welled up in her heart, along with extreme embarrassment.

She finally understood that her previous actions in the eyes of others were probably like a clown jumping around, and the reason she was still alive now was just because they hadn't wanted to destroy her yet.

The beam that split an iofer flagship-level battleship in two with one blow was definitely not something the grace vessel could withstand; previously, they were just playing games with her using water guns.

In the face of absolute material power, so-called psionics, so-called faith, if not strong enough, are just fig leaves for the weak.

"Who... who exactly are they?"

The adjutant asked with his mouth wide open.

Amira looked at the silver giant ships in the sky, and the arrogant light in her eyes finally extinguished.

"They destroyed an iofer sub-fleet, they shouldn't be with that group of demons... Shut down the engines of the grace vessel and send a communication request to the sky; we need to have a conversation with them."