Xyrin Empire
Chapter 575: Apparently, Things are Starting to Get Ridiculous

Chapter 575: Chapter 575: Apparently, Things are Starting to Get Ridiculous

I admit I am a bit too nice, but at least I haven’t been so saintly as to send my own soldiers to their deaths for a "Free Kingdom" that we’ve come across by chance without any understanding. Helping Jie En repel enemy warships in outer space was something we simply had to do, but sending our landing forces to fight desperately on the planet’s surface was a bit too much. The main reason we were so actively looking to help reclaim the occupied Colonization Star was due to a message recently transmitted by Pandora.

When we "shot down" that rhombus-shaped flagship, Pandora detected a subtle energy reaction on the planet’s surface. According to the little fellow, it resembled the residue left after a Ghost Energy explosion.

This, of course, was worth paying attention to, but that reaction was near several major anti-aircraft laser positions on the ground, clearly a military stronghold. To investigate it, the best opportunity would naturally be during this landing operation. Fortunately, the Protos Clan’s abundance of unmanned combat units could minimize the losses of the landing operation. Moreover, by doing this, we could also gain the trust of this Free Kingdom. This strange world was in utter disarray, and with the Free Kingdom being one of the major forces, it was our breakthrough point to clarify the situation. Also, I really wanted to know whether this Free Kingdom had any contact with Lilina’s Holy Temple Army. That girl’s communication frequency had obviously been completely reset by the information barriers of this world. We couldn’t possibly broadcast a full-spectrum broadcast throughout the universe...

Write the content like this: "On a certain day, somewhere, someone accidentally lost a dark-minded, violent Fake Lolita Priest named Lilina. She’s barely over a meter tall, looks sweet and cute on the outside but has a nasty and cunning personality. She carries with her a demolition crew of tens of thousands of people, as well as a fleet of warships (this number might be increasing). If found, please return to the original owner promptly to avoid an unnecessary doomsday."

I guess once this broadcast goes out, Lilina is going to lose it.

Jie En Fleet started to approach the low orbit, drawing anti-air fire at that distance, while dozens of the Federation Army’s aircraft carriers rapidly approached the atmosphere under the Invisibility Field of the Holy Mother Ship. Luckily, we had modified the Spiritual Network Generator of the Holy Mother Ship, endowing it with both mass and individual invisibility states. The latter could provide enhanced concealment for specific targets. However, we had to act quickly, as the technological level of this world was in a strange state, with primitive technology and super technology existing almost side by side. Jie En Army’s outdated ships that used jet propulsion and mechanical catapult devices could actually crack the Invisibility Field of the Light of El. I had no doubts that the colonization planet’s surface stations with more comprehensive facilities might detect the aircraft carriers in their enhanced invisibility state.

Luckily, under Qianqian’s time acceleration effect, the aircraft carriers took only "one minute" to complete the task of deploying tens of thousands of combat robots and hundreds of giants into the atmosphere before quickly retreating. The ground forces of Jetas Planet were completely unaware of this, not noticing the sudden disappearance of dozens of carriers from the mysterious forces, nor that Jie En’s forces were merely a distraction. A few minutes later, the message of the landing forces’ arrival on the planet’s surface was relayed back.

"The Destroyers have reached the designated targets. We will launch assaults on three ground command centers and twenty-two energy stations, which will disable two-thirds of the anti-aircraft fire in the Northern Hemisphere. Then it will be your turn," Reynolds told Jie En, who was waiting on the communicator. Jie En widened his eyes, looking in the direction of what might be another screen, and said with some surprise, "Your optical invisibility technology is truly miraculous. Going against you is a terrifying thing."

...But going against the Imperial Fleet is even more terrifying.

Ninety percent of the already-landed ground forces were comprised of Protos artificial intelligence units. These agile and versatile tactical attack machines and giants standing a hundred meters tall possessed incredible combat power. And they neither feared death nor felt pain. The information provided by Jie En indicated that most of Jetas Planet’s military facilities were designed to resist the once-rampant native terrorists. Against attack machines armed with anti-matter missiles and thermal cutting guns capable of vaporizing heavy armor instantly, these shelters made to withstand explosive weapons proved exceedingly fragile.

The battle on the ground lasted less than thirty minutes. The sudden attack caught the enemy below completely off guard, and the presence of such imposing units as the giants likely gave them quite a shock. To the naked eye, dozens of bright flames burst forth beneath Jetas’s thick atmosphere, almost simultaneously. Shortly after, much of the anti-aircraft lasers across the entire Northern Hemisphere went dark.

The rest was no longer our concern.

"Bro! Bro! I’m back!"

That crisp, cheerful voice suddenly rang out behind me; without a doubt, the only one who would greet me like this was the lively and restless Visca, more importantly, someone who had just released her excess nitroglycerin and was in high spirits. Sure enough, as soon as I turned around, a petite figure threw herself into my arms, bringing with her a thick scent of char...

You should go take a bath first, girl.

Sneaking onto someone else’s spaceship to cut out the entire power unit and engaging in close-range firefight with the ship’s guard, then careening through 200,000 kilometers of crossfire with a still-smoking engine—I shuddered to think what other unspeakable things she had done. Now the pits of the girl’s arms even smelled like tar.

"Hmm hmm~~~" Purring like a kitten, Visca stubbornly burrowed into my arms, as if she had no clue where she’d just come from. Holding the soft body of the little one, I had to accept that my sister was now nearly equivalent to a spent shell casing in aroma. Since Pandora hadn’t yet arrived, Visca could indeed enjoy monopolizing her brother for a while.

"Alright, now tell me, why did you hijack someone’s engine?"

This was a puzzling question for me. Everyone knows that Pandora and Visca love war, but I was not aware that they also had a habit of robbing other people’s engines. Their battle tactics today were truly diabolical.

"That engine contains a Morsenmorde structure. The dumb sister [Lili] also wanted to see if the spaceship’s control core had any matching components, but she didn’t manage to dismantle its control core—the spaceships made by those low-level civilizations are just not sturdy!"

I instinctively broke out in a cold sweat. Compared to these two little lunatics who could disassemble a universe-class warship with their bare hands, the guy who dismantled a mecha barehanded seemed ridiculously weak. And now Visca was even complaining about the other party’s spaceship not being sturdy enough...

Then came the confusion: Morsenmorde structure? What on earth was that? Was it part of the same system as a gearbox?

"The Morsenmorde structure is the last generation of fuel engine architectures that was discarded by the Empire," spoke a voice suddenly, without any warning, right next to me, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. Fortunately, the next second I recognized who it was: a semi-transparent apparition, with edges trembling as if affected by electromagnetic interference, an apparition of an older sister with black hair, glasses, and a charming demeanor.

"Taville? Is that a mass projection? Why does it look like you’re running out of power, shaking all over?"

"The interference from the information barrier is too intense, and the bandwidth of the Sakura is not enough," the black-haired researcher shrugged, her body blurring significantly due to that overly large gesture, taking a few seconds to stabilize, "But that doesn’t affect my research—well, bandwidth is precious, so let’s get to the point, my Emperor. The power unit that General Pandora and General Visca brought back seems to be a modified version of the Empire’s last generation of fuel engines. Although after the maturity of engine technologies such as the energy burst circuit, vector traction, and coordinate propulsion, devices that still require fuel to be ignited to release power had been completely phased out, its hundred percent energy efficiency rate is still a coveted technology for many civilizations. The Morsenmorde structure is a proprietary technology of the Xyrin Empire, the development of which is closely related to the thought patterns of the Xyrin Apostles themselves. It could be said that only we could develop something similar."

"So you’re saying—someone in this universe is infringing on the Empire’s intellectual property?"

"Ah Jun, can’t you be serious for once?" Big Sister reprimanded me with a glance, and then said to Taville, "We still hold the patent rights, correct?"

"...Anyway, your subordinate will continue to study the material. If you find any more strange things in this world, please let your subordinate analyze them. We might be uncovering a piece of lost history—that’s the theory, anyway. Hmm, our connection time is up, your subordinate will take his leave now."

Ah, he dodged a double whammy from Big Sister and me in a very rigid and foolish way.

"Great Mentor, our landing forces on the surface of Jetas have sent back information."

Just as my connection with Taville got cut off, Zeratul’s deep voice emerged, patching through the encrypted channel of the Federation Army. A sister dressed in the Empire’s modified Ghost Light Armor appeared on the screen. Behind her, several Ghost Agents and two towering Dark Templar were vigilantly on guard. The background seemed to be a desolate rock bed or a Gobi desert. Nearby on the ground, molten material was still steaming, and the wreckage of several War Chariots was smoking not far away, creating a desolate scene under the sunset.

I seem to have a talent for stirring emotions lately.

"Hello, Your Majesty, I’m Nova," the sister who seemed to be the squad leader spoke up and I choked on my drink. But before I could ask her anything else, the capable female officer turned and pointed to the smoking area behind her as she began to report, "This is the calibration point. Originally, there was an enemy mechanized unit stationed here. Thanks to the Empire’s Raven Instructor teaching me Arcane Energy, cleaning up these hunks of metal was relatively easy—This is actually the bottom of a huge Circular Mountain. It’s so big that it feels more like a basin. You can see the edge of the Circular Mountain over there. The enemy has established something like an Energy Extraction Station nearby, which continuously powers two nearby laser turrets, and the source of energy for this station... although it sounds unbelievable, is the air—the air inside this Circular Mountain."

"The air here is filled with a low concentration of Ghost Energy Radiation, and it’s very active. With a little guidance, it can be gathered, which has helped us a lot. My soldiers have collected many soil samples, which contain traces of Ghost Energy Crystal Powder and what appears to be alloy fragments made by the Empire, but I’m not very familiar with the latter. The Dark Templar Tarom suspects that there’s something underneath the Circular Mountain. He says his eyes saw light beneath the darkness, but time does not seem to allow us to dig a mine here now. Also, there were no casualties in this operation, only the new recruit Li Wei got run over by the enemy’s heavy tank, but he’s fine, Tarom is setting his bones right now, over."

The communication was cut off, and I blinked my eyes and spread my hands to Big Sister: "Sis, I feel like this universe is kind of screwing with us."

Big Sister lovingly gave me a flick on the forehead.

"Officer, a message from the Jie En Army, do you want to pick it up?"

"Put them through."

Then, the next second, the entire bridge was filled with the booming voice of some handsome middle-aged gentleman—I had no idea how he managed to maintain such strong vocal cords at his age: "Ah ha! Queen above, my friend! You’ve helped us retake this Colonization Star! Jetas is now under Kingdom rule again! I owe you an enormous favor!"

"The attackers on this Colonization Star were indeed the ’Light Cavalry,’ and they truly haven’t shed their old pirate habits. Your miraculous airdrop surprise attack in the Northern Hemisphere destroyed nearly half of their anti-aircraft firepower. Originally, if these robbers had been a bit braver, they might have held out for a while with the support of the Star Ring Calibration Tower near the equator. But these guys with pirate backgrounds were so scared by your troops; after losing the anti-air defenses in the Northern Hemisphere, they barely put up a resistance before surrendering. Ah, maybe you want to hear this part, really thrilling—"

Jie En gestured to someone nearby, then the communicator let out a burst of radio signals intercepted by Jie En’s atmospheric assault team:

"...Outpost, Outpost 133, sudden appearance of numerous flashes in the sky... unknown identity bombers broke through the atmosphere!"

"Our Energy Shield is breached! In an instant, it shattered like soap bubbles under those photon missiles... Outpost 119 requesting support! Our energy supply is cut off..."

"Suddenly two hundred-meter tall Mechas appeared, what the heck are those... Oh mama! They sliced off the cliff behind us with beams! The outside of the outpost has melted! Requesting support! Those two monsters are covered with Energy Shields; our fire power is not..."

"There’s more, lots more. These self-proclaimed Interstellar Warriors, the ’Cavalry’ pirates, also have moments of piss and panic. Although the Steel Storm Guard of the Free Kingdom can equally intimidate this Mob, I still have to say, your precious troops are really something!"

Jie En’s mood was obviously very buoyant after retaking lost ground so quickly. Whether it was heartfelt or not, he loudly praised the Federation Army’s landing troops to the skies, although there was definitely some intent to woo us closer to whatshisname’s Free Kingdom—genuine admiration was certainly present as well.

At that moment, I felt even more baffled by the Universe’s pattern: messy fleets, completely unclassifiable levels of science, a political map depicting almost the entire Universe at war with each other, and this atmosphere that straddles between officialdom and the private sector, somewhere between pirates and military (although not very obvious, I noticed that Jie En’s army also had a bit of that Interstellar Pirate flavor, although they were thoroughly "whitewashed"). What kind of bizarre history does a normal civilization need to undergo to end up in such an egg-aching state? I think this place can already be called a sociologist’s nightmare.

Plus, I felt a little sorry for that group of "Caputlan Free Light Cavalry."

We ended up somehow mixed up with Jie En’s troops, somehow taking part in their national recovery war, and somehow engaged in a fierce battle with some of the Universe’s largest "official pirates," all the while feeling out of place due to unfamiliarity. But those "Free Light Cavalry" were even more frustrated; they only did two things: first, they gleefully occupied Jetas, and second, they were wiped out by some inexplicable folks after being hyped for six hours.

I learned this later from Jie En that the Free Light Cavalry had launched a successful surprise attack and a model ground war, but what’s even more noteworthy is their rule over the planet for five hours and forty-three minutes. Jie En’s troops not only returned home far faster than they could have imagined, but they also brought back an army like monsters, and, most importantly, two Dwarf-like monsters. However, I only felt sympathy and disdain for those unfortunate invaders; as pirates, they should have stuck to the principle of "shoot and scoot," occasionally kidnapping a couple of hostages to extort some maintenance funds for a seaside villa, or raiding a mine to fatten their wallets before lying low for half a year. At most, they’d post some obscure recruitment ads on the official websites, indicating ’address confidential, no inquiries over the phone, contact person TBD’—thinking they’re strong enough to imitate rebel forces and conquer cities for sovereignty? That’s just brain-farting...

An archetypal robber, the kind who would only think to increase the national protection fee by twenty bucks after seizing the President’s Mansion, when Jie En was euphorically "liberating" the entirety of Jetas, a large number of workers in remote mining areas didn’t even know their planet had been occupied once; they had no idea what those Light Cavalry who landed like extras were up to and were unconcerned if the flashes in the sky were space artillery or Lightning Storms. Hence, you can imagine the stupidity of those pirates trying to be kings of the mountain...

This left Jie En, who had been looking forward to a hero’s welcome (he did receive quite a bit of celebration from the public, only the sheer quickness of the Free Light Cavalry’s demise left the impressions of this liberation war too shallow. If we’d gone for a twenty-year siege, watching the planetary population nearly wiped out before landing, I guarantee the whole planet would’ve been stirred up—if those idiotic pirates couldn’t establish a regime in twenty years), slightly disappointed. Nonetheless, a lightning-fast reconquest at least largely redeemed his error in holding the territory, thus the old charmer was in an exceptionally good mood.

We also subsequently landed on Jetas—and here I must mention, Jie En wasn’t a complete stick-in-the-mud; after the recovery war ended, he generously agreed to our request to dock the entire Federation Fleet, including the Light of El, in the outer layer of the atmosphere. This showed that we had earned his great trust... Bullshit. He was just very aware that his handful of troops couldn’t possibly withstand our voracious warships, especially the two voracious Shorties. (To be continued, if you want to know what happens next, please visit www.qidian.com; the Chapters are more abundant, support the author, support genuine reading!)

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