Rebirth of the Super Battleship-Chapter 593: Five Stars

Xiao Yu’s feelers were slowly extending outward. Xiao Yu’s original plan had been to transport seventeen stars to encircle and annihilate the Level 5 Civilization Alliance, but he discovered that seventeen stars might not be enough. After all, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance would not obediently stand there and let the energy of stellar explosions destroy them. They would also use spatial geometry to reduce the damage they suffered.

Although Xiao Yu had thought of this from the start, he had not expected it to be so effective. After all, he had never done such a thing before and lacked sufficient experimental data to support it. So Xiao Yu turned his sights to stars farther out in the surrounding area.

Twenty stars entered Xiao Yu’s field of view. He had already dispatched expeditionary fleets carrying sufficient resources and industrial facilities into curvature flight toward these stars.

By various means, Xiao Yu had already detonated as many as five stars. Although the Level 5 Civilization Alliance had reduced their damage as much as possible, the explosions of these five stars still inflicted what could be called grievous losses. They lost more than fifty million ships, and the number of planetary war stars lost reached thirty-seven. For the first time, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance’s total number of planetary war stars dropped below one hundred.

Because those thirty-seven planetary war stars had lost their planetary engines, they had also lost even their meager mobility. This meant they could only continue forward at their current speed under inertia. They could no longer execute even the slightest change in heading unless the Level 5 Civilization Alliance built planetary engines on them again. Obviously, Xiao Yu would not give them that chance.

Xiao Yu slightly altered a star’s orbit and thereby forced the Level 5 Civilization Alliance to change their course as well, while those thirty-seven planets could not change course. Thus the Level 5 Civilization Alliance could only abandon those thirty-seven planets.

Too slow. Still too slow. Xiao Yu thought with some regret that at this rate of attrition, he would need at least more than a dozen stellar explosions to fully reduce the Level 5 Civilization Alliance’s actual combat capability to below his own. Only then could he command his fleets to smash their planetary shields, capture their ships, and obtain their technology.

But Xiao Yu had no alternative. He could only continue to wait.

The fleets sent to transport the second batch of twenty stars had departed more than a decade earlier. At present, the nearest of this batch would reach its target within a year. To buy time, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance had already begun adjusting their trajectory, but no matter how they calculated it, within two years they would certainly be struck by a stellar bomb.

A year and a half later, just as Xiao Yu had projected, another stellar bomb was detonated near the Level 5 Civilization Alliance. This stellar bomb strike destroyed nine planetary war stars and fifteen million warships. Up to now, even with nearly one trillion people contributing to logistics, the Alliance’s total number of ships still fell further, dropping to less than one hundred and thirty million.

“Although continuing like this would surely wear you down to death, I have lost my patience.” Xiao Yu thought to himself. “Then this time let us play big. I plan to arrange five stars to detonate simultaneously from different bearings. I want to see how you can still arrange your defenses.”

This time Xiao Yu was determined to crush the Level 5 Civilization Alliance in one stroke. Five stars from different bearings exploding at once could inflict an all-around strike on the Level 5 Civilization Alliance. This strike would have no blind spots, which meant the Level 5 Civilization Alliance could no longer adopt their current shielding tactics. After the five stars were detonated simultaneously, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance would at most have five to eight planetary war stars remaining. For the present Xiao Yu, five to eight planetary war stars were already nothing.

For this strategic goal, Xiao Yu began busy work. The orbits of more than thirty stars had to be computed. He also had to predict in advance the Level 5 Civilization Alliance’s movements and make arrangements in advance for their possible responses, striving to encircle them in the shortest time.

This was an extremely arduous task. Only Xiao Yu could carry out such a mad undertaking.

What Xiao Yu did not know was that within the Level 5 Civilization Alliance, one matter had risen in importance to the same level as opposing Xiao Yu. This matter was the installation of planetary curvature engines.

For this, the leader drew upon the last batch of reserve troops and, after training, turned them into workers. He also requisitioned tens of billions of laborers from among the civilians, nearly fifty billion in total, to begin work on the remaining one hundred plus planetary war stars.

“This will be our trump card,” said the leader. “We must ensure secrecy in this matter and not let the Divine Ark Civilization detect it. I have received intelligence that the Divine Ark Civilization intends to detonate five stars simultaneously near us to wipe us out. Then let the Divine Ark Civilization go ahead and do this. Let this meaningless undertaking consume the enemy’s energy, resources, and time. When the Divine Ark Civilization believes everything is foolproof, we will suddenly use planetary curvature flight technology to escape the encirclement. This will be very beneficial to buying development time for us.”

Understood, leader. The assistant standing by respectfully recorded the leader’s instructions.

“I will personally supervise the planetary curvature engine construction project. It must be completed within three years. Pass down the order that if it cannot be completed, I will not mind using tens of thousands of lives to quell the anger in the hearts of the populace.”

“Understood, leader,” the assistant replied.

Time continued to pass slowly. When a war lasts too long, the two sides grow accustomed to its existence. The present Level 5 Civilization Alliance and the Divine Ark Civilization were in such a state. Engagements between the two sides had become something like routine affairs. Losing ships and losing soldiers no longer aroused the same emotions as before. Both sides felt somewhat numb to it.

This was the most arduous and longest war Xiao Yu had waged since leaving Earth. It lasted so long that even Xiao Yu felt a little impatient. Therefore, when everything proceeded according to plan and the five stars successfully encircled the Level 5 Civilization Alliance within, Xiao Yu felt extremely excited.

“Now then. Level 5 Civilization Alliance, farewell. I will inherit your technology and meld it with mine to ultimately push me into the realm of a Level 6 Civilization.” Xiao Yu thought to himself as he issued the command to detonate the stars.

At this moment the Level 5 Civilization Alliance seemed to abandon resistance altogether, making no masking or defensive moves. This made Xiao Yu feel a slight twinge of surprise, and he quickly formed several hypotheses.

These hypotheses were simple. Based on the current situation and intelligence gathered previously, Xiao Yu made three projections. First, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance now possessed planetary shields strong enough to withstand stellar explosions. Second, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance already possessed planetary curvature flight technology. Third, the Level 5 Civilization Alliance knew that resistance was useless and simply gave up.

Of these three projections, Xiao Yu directly ruled out the third. After a thorough analysis of the technological data, he also ruled out the first. That left only the second.

“Given the Level 5 Civilization Alliance’s technological foundation, it was indeed possible they had mastered planetary curvature flight technology. What puzzled me is that I have been strictly monitoring them, so why have I never seen them conduct a true curvature flight test using planets? Perhaps they deliberately kept it from me with the sole purpose of making me toil in vain to buy themselves time. But they are a bit too confident.”

Xiao Yu pondered for a while and reached no conclusion.

The stars had already been detonated. When the destructive energy of the stars reached them, everything would be revealed. Speculating wildly now was meaningless.

So Xiao Yu stood by and began quiet observation. He did not make arrangements to prevent the Level 5 Civilization Alliance from using planetary curvature flight to escape the blast zone, because doing so would be pointless.

The reason was simple. If the Level 5 Civilization Alliance truly used curvature flight technology to flee the stellar blast zone and Xiao Yu’s fleets sortied to block them here, then although the Level 5 Civilization Alliance’s forces would be destroyed by the stellar explosions, do not forget that blocking them here would also mean Xiao Yu’s own forces would remain here. The result could only be mutual destruction. That was meaningless.

Thus Xiao Yu simply watched quietly from the side.

He saw the Level 5 Civilization Alliance move. A few minutes after the stellar detonations, spatial fluctuations very familiar to Xiao Yu began to appear around the Alliance’s base. With these fluctuations, all planetary war stars, along with the warships and spacecraft, all disappeared. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

So you have indeed mastered this technology. This is troublesome. Xiao Yu murmured to himself. Having mastered planetary curvature flight meant my stellar encirclement strategy had lost its meaning. Exploding stars could no longer affect you. In that case, how can I break the Level 5 Civilization Alliance?

Must I really give up here? Xiao Yu thought with some unwillingness.

Just then, a fluctuation very familiar to Xiao Yu was transmitted from afar.