Chapter 1581: Rescue
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The super-light observation equipment got sight of the scene in the distance. Hao Ren realized that the situation was out of ordinary this time.
Ma.s.sive wreckage was drifting in s.p.a.ce. It had a distinct curved surface and a tapered base. Judging from its size, it was easy to deduce that it was a fragment that came off a planet more ma.s.sive than Earth.
Astoundingly, there were still survivors on the planetary fragment. Artificial lights illuminated the surface, which appeared lush green. A glowing ‘gauze’ shrouded the s.p.a.ce continent; it was a sign of the existence of an atmosphere. No doubt, this planetary fragment had an incredible life-sustaining system that still worked until today.
But the situation of this broken celestial body did not look good as there was a dark and hideous army right on its a.s.s.
Hao Ren zoomed in the visual with the super-light observation equipment while ordered Nolan to send swift-flying probes to monitor the situation discreetly. When the probes sent back the visual, Hao Ren could not help but marvel what the heck that was.
It was a chaotic coalition of an army, distorted alien creatures, and steel monsters. There were no words to describe the real faces of these monsters, which included swollen blobs of flesh as tall as a skysc.r.a.per, mollusks full of tentacles and eyestalks, beasts patched together with different limbs and heads, and festered and swollen giants. But these grotesque monsters were only small potatoes in the army. There were also hybrids of creature and metal that resembled battles.h.i.+ps. Hao Ren believed that those with armor and tentacles were s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps with parasitic biological tissue on the outside. They still vaguely retained the shape of a s.p.a.cecraft, but a layer of black substance was squirming on the surface, and a large number of proliferating limbs poking out of the gaps of the outer sh.e.l.ls and wiggling in s.p.a.ce.
The first thing that came to Hao Ren’s mind was the monsters of chaos in Collow.
Chaos, disorder, madness, and full of signs of blasphemy and depravity. They were also senseless and hideous.
At this moment, this super-ugly army, which could destroy the earth by their hideous look alone, was attacking the escaping celestial fragments that still glimmered faintly. Various dirty beams and bombs of flesh and blood rained down on the floating s.p.a.ce island, which had a thin layer of energy s.h.i.+eld protecting itself against those attacks. But from the extent of the tremor of the thin film, the s.h.i.+eld would not hold up for long.
Vivian was always steady no matter what she encountered. But this time, she could not help but be disgusted by the unsightly look of the h.e.l.lish army. Vivian covered her mouth and muttered, “I cannot believe that such things exist in the galaxy. What are they? Where did they come from?”
“I am afraid they have everything to do with the Mad Lord. Chaos and decaying are synonyms of the Mad Lord,” Hao Ren said with a frown while instructing the drone cl.u.s.ter to charged ahead. “It is the first time we saw the minions of the Mad Lord in s.p.a.ce—what’s more in Star Cl.u.s.ter X. This is not what I have expected. The situation in Star Cl.u.s.ter X doesn’t look good.”
Nolan adjusted her course and accelerated toward the battlefield. s.p.a.ce in the surroundings appeared empty, but it was just an illusion. There were thousands of armed drones, which were in stealth mode, escorting her at the moment.
Hao Ren had also upgraded the stealth capability of the Petrachelys, but he did not turn on the function. Instead, he let Nolan fly the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p toward the battlefield conspicuously. This should catch those festered monsters by surprise.
It was just that whether their rotten thinking organs could still understand what ‘surprise’ meant.
On the floating planetary fragment, the sprites were in a state of chaos.
The terrifying pursuers were right on their a.s.s. As if vultures smelled the stinky stench of the corpse, they emerged from the dark and quickly surrounded the s.p.a.ce continent, which had lost its propellant power. The divine power that the s.p.a.ce continent exuded was a fatal attraction to the decaying creatures. They launched an unrelenting attack at the s.p.a.ce chunk the moment they appeared.
The sprites had been in a terrible mess while they formulated a strategy before the enemy emerged. But their disorderly discussion and overly spiral thinking had only led to a chaotic approach. The sprites ran around, sneaked into the ancient temples, squeezed into the cannons that had no power to operate, wriggled into the damaged s.h.i.+eld generator, and even dug into the underground pipes and engines that had been sealed for three thousand years. Inside there, they tried to restart the long-abandoned equipment. They had been working for the past three thousand years but never succeeded.
So, they worked hard to repair, dismantle, and then put them back together. They took the instruction manual that the guardian giant left behind to activate the emergency preservation system of the fortress, but it was nowhere to be found. It turned out that the facility buried in the center of the earth had gone when the planet fell apart.
However incredible it was, the sprite had managed to fire up a s.h.i.+eld generator that had been down for three thousand years at the critical moment. The s.h.i.+eld generator was only part of the ma.s.sive planetary s.h.i.+eld system, and the energy s.h.i.+eld it generated was only a fraction of the strength of when the complete system was in place.
But they had fired up the generator, and the s.h.i.+eld held up so far.
“The s.h.i.+eld works! The s.h.i.+eld works! The s.h.i.+eld works! It keeps the bad guys out!”
The sprites gathered around the s.h.i.+eld generator (and possibly somewhere else), screaming in joy.
“I could not believe that the damaged s.h.i.+eld generator still works! We are amazing!”
“Thanks, G.o.ddess! We survived the crisis!”
“We survived! We survived!”
More disorderly shouting.
“But those bad guys are still out there! We cannot chase them away with the s.h.i.+eld alone! They will defeat the s.h.i.+eld sooner or later!”
“We are going to die! We are going to die! We are going to die!”
“Fight back! Fight back! We must fight back! We have to shoot those sons of a b.i.t.c.h out of here! There is not much we can do with only the s.h.i.+eld!”
“That’s right! Shoot them! Shoot them! Fight back! Fight back! Quick! Get the guns!”
A moment of silence later.
“But we still have no guns!”
“We are going to die! We are going to die! We are going to die!”
The sprites fell into a ma.s.sive sense of crisis again with more chaos and panic than before the arrival of the enemy. Amid the chaos and noise, some brave sprites looked up and saw something they had never seen before emerging in the dark.
Had they been humans, there was absolutely no way they could spot the small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p coming near the battlefield in the distance. But the sprites could sense and see anything that appeared within their range of perception. Even if it were just a speck of dust, it would look as striking as the sun in their eyes.
“What is that?”
“I see it! I see it! It looks like a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p!”
“Who are they? Who are they? Has the guardian giant finally found us?”
“It does not look like the guardian giant’s s.p.a.cecraft. This one is white.”
“No, it is not white. It is silver!”
“That is almost the same thing!”
“The s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p is fighting the bad guys!”
“Oh, it is! It comes for us! It comes for us! It is on our side!”
“We should help. We cannot just sit by and watch!”
“But… we still have no guns.”
“Argh… Trouble! Trouble! Let the queen decide! Let the queen decide!”
Everyone looked at each other.
“But we have no queen!”
On the flight deck of the Petrachelys, the holographic image of Nolan was operating the weapon control system. “Boss, from the start, the s.p.a.ce continent has been emitting a variable, high-frequency, low-intensity energy frequency. It is a bit strange.”
“A fortress in disrepair emits some energy frequency is normal.” Hao Ren glanced at the floating continent. He saw some mechanical structures and pipes protruded from rock formations and naturally thought that those things part of the fortress group. “Let’s not worry about the situation on the ground. We first have to get rid of those nasty guys.”
“Nolan understood.”
The emergence of the Petrachelys had caused a stir. But that was not unexpected.
If the experience of combating the Mad Lord were anything to go by, creatures infested by the Mad Lord would be violent and disorderly. Even if they still had a bit of thinking ability, they would use it in the fighting. The sudden appearance of an unknown s.p.a.cecraft instantly ignited the anger of the dark army.
The twisted monsters turned around and frantically waved their mutated limbs as they lunged at and attacked the Petrachelys. No one knew how those monsters could maneuver and fight so flexible in s.p.a.ce, but it did not prevent the start of a melee.
There was a limit as to how much attention a s.p.a.cecraft could draw to itself. Hao Ren decided to order Nolan to lift the restrictions on all weapons of the Petrachelys. He had Nolan dialed up the power of the s.h.i.+eld to its maximum and plunged into the chaotic sea of enemies.
The main cannon fired with a burst of light, the powerful psionic beam swept across s.p.a.ce, shattering monsters into crystal dust. Meanwhile, the twelve sets of sub-cannons on both sides of the battles.h.i.+p and missile launchers under the armors began to fire into all directions. It was as if the Petrachelys had grown countless laser spears, clearing out a vast area in s.p.a.ce.
The attack was met with a fierce counterattack. The monsters might not be intelligent, but they were fury fighters when it came to combat. They quickly came to their senses and raining their most potent attack on the s.h.i.+eld of the Petrachelys.
Dirty energy beams and solid bombs exploded on the s.h.i.+eld. The Petrachelys began to shake violently as if flying through a thunderstorm. Nolan charged on while reporting aloud, “s.h.i.+eld capacity 80%… 70%, 60%!”
“Fly straight through. We are not fighting the monsters head-on.”
“Nolan got it!”
The dark legion was not the weaklings that Hao Ren had met previously. They were capable of s.p.a.ce combat and highly destructive. The Petrachelys’s s.h.i.+eld capacity had dropped by 40% in just one round of battle. Had Hao Ren come alone, perhaps he would have to beg the G.o.ddess to resurrect him back home.
But he was not alone.
The Petrachelys had made enough noise to get the attention of the twisted monsters. The fires and rapid movement of the s.p.a.cecraft had diverted the attention of those unintelligent guys away from their original target. Many monsters had turned around to chase the Petrachelys. But this only led to more chaos to the already disorderly formation of the monsters.
When looking from a distance, the monsters appeared as if a group of bees, stirred by a gust of violent wind, flew around aimlessly.
However, it was impossible to rely on this entrapment tactic to break the encirclement around the planetary wreckage. The monsters would not give up their original target to chase a female pilot with whom they could never catch up. Nolan’s drag racing in s.p.a.ce was just to create a diversion around the army of monsters.
When part of the monsters apparently strayed from the leading group, Hao Ren issued an instruction to the drone cl.u.s.ter.
“Drone cl.u.s.ter, showtime!”