Weapons
After the tachyon communication ended, Lulian was curious about this "Luna."
Except for humans, such naming conventions were rare in the Galactic Federation. How could the Supreme Military Commander have no readily available information?
He did know of a Luna, but that was a figure from tens of thousands of years ago. In the Galactic Federation, even the highest-ranking individuals couldn't achieve immortality unless they left the Federation.
"If this were a game, this character would be a helpful NPC."
But Lulian knew this wasn't a game; he couldn't apply game logic to reality.
"Based on her information, we have the overall advantage. The enemy fleet is limited, and their energy reserves in this battlefield are inferior to ours."
"The key is the assistance."
He opened the star chart.
The Heavenly Chain wasn't the only battlefield; there were several others.
Each location was strategically crucial, a star system the Filament civilization had to control. Without control, they couldn't freely enter Federation territory.
"The most impressive part is the interplay between these star systems. Did this Commander Luna anticipate all of this?"
If the Filament civilization attacked each star system individually, their losses would be minimal.
But Luna had anticipated this, forcing them to attack multiple systems simultaneously, dividing their forces.
These star systems formed a sector, spanning 36 light-years and encircling the Filament fleet.
It was both a defensive and offensive maneuver.
If the Filament civilization concentrated its forces on a single star system, the Federation dreadnoughts in the other systems would attack their rear.
The Filament civilization's expeditionary force required continuous reinforcements.
These reinforcements were based in three star systems. If attacked by the Federation, the Filament vanguard would be cut off, withering without support.
However, if the Filament civilization only deployed a small force, they couldn't effectively engage the Federation fleet, leading to a stalemate.
"While a stalemate seems to favor the Filament civilization, it doesn't."
"This is Federation territory. A prolonged stalemate allows the Federation to deploy more fleets and encircle the vanguard."
"Everything is calculated."
"The Filament civilization is forced to commit its forces across multiple fronts, dragged into a full-scale war."
"Their only options are to either engage or retreat."
"But retreat is unlikely. If the Filament vanguard retreats too far, how will they gather intelligence on the Federation? They'd lose their purpose."
"This commander is formidable."
The more Lulian analyzed the situation, the more he realized the Federation had the upper hand.
This wasn't surprising; it was, after all, Federation territory. The disparity between the Federation and the Filament civilization wasn't so great that one could crush the other. They were facing only a Filament vanguard; if they couldn't win this, the Federation might as well surrender.
The Filament civilization launched this campaign primarily because of the Federation's provocations. They also knew they were being targeted by two Level 2 civilizations of comparable strength.
This put them at a disadvantage and forced them to retaliate. They didn't know why the Federation and the other civilization were attacking; both had even sent vanguards. The Filament civilization was forced to retaliate against the seemingly weaker of the two—the Federation—not because they actively wanted to engage a near-peer opponent.
But this comprehensive grasp of the strategic situation and insight into the enemy's motivations were extraordinary.
This was what truly impressed Lulian about Luna.
"I just hope this grinding campaign goes smoothly!"
...
Two years and three months later…
The Heavenly Chain had established numerous factories and swarm nests within the star system.
The Filament fleet was approaching.
The first to arrive weren't warships, but countless laser weapons resembling falling stars.
As a powerful Level 2 civilization, their laser weapons weren't purely lasers. These lasers traveled at 95% the speed of light, interspersed with other elements that amplified their destructive power.
Upon nearing their targets, these powerful lasers caused localized spacetime distortions, creating miniature black holes—or more accurately, singularities.
These singularities, upon reaching a critical threshold, would detonate, unleashing an explosion that consumed everything within a 2-million-kilometer radius.
"Singularity weapons."
"Deploy the swarms to intercept."
Tens of thousands of these weapons rained down on the massive Heavenly Chain. One singularity struck the dreadnought; the resulting explosion tore through the energy shield, depleting nearly 9% of the Heavenly Chain's total energy reserves.
And that was just one.
Lulian felt uneasy; the Filament civilization's weaponry was incredibly powerful, capable of triggering large-scale energy releases with a small number of photons—a devastatingly effective tactic.
One wrong move, and the Heavenly Chain could be destroyed.
In such a large-scale battle, individual bravery was meaningless.
"Counterattack!"
"Initiate phase deployment…"
Energy was wirelessly transmitted from the Heavenly Chain to various large devices in the surrounding area. These devices, called "Ke Coherent Emitters," could receive energy and release it in a specific pattern.
Their purpose was to facilitate massive-scale attacks.
In the space between the Federation and Filament fleets, countless light fragments resembling shattered glass spread towards the Filament formation. It felt as if the two fleets were encased in a block of glass, and the Federation was shattering that glass, directing the cracks along a predetermined path.
The Filament fleet tried to evade the barrage, but the phase deployment spanned 700 astronomical units, making evasion impossible.
The entire Filament fleet was engulfed, seemingly trapped within a shattered mirror world.
The complete fleet was isolated into fragments by the energetic shards of light.
Phase deployment was an application of light, using specific gravitational forces to distort light into various shapes. It was invented by a Lightwings scholar. Of course, it wasn't simply about trapping the enemy; the massive energy release and disruption of electromagnetic signals created powerful magnetic waves that resonated within the mirror-like structure.
Fragments began to disintegrate as positrons and electrons collided and annihilated.
"Hummm…"
High-frequency electromagnetic waves impacting objects created a humming sound.
The area within 1000 astronomical units was covered in extreme light, a luminosity a billion times brighter than the Sun.
Phase deployment was also a purely offensive weapon. The light itself was an attack.
While radiation is extremely dangerous for living beings and electronics, the phase deployment light had reached gamma-ray levels.
Based on the photoelectric effect, the temperature at the core of the light had already exceeded 1000 trillion degrees Celsius.
However, this only lasted for a very brief moment.
Phase deployment excelled at wide-area surprise attacks.
Its primary strength, however, was geometry.
The phase deployment geometry wasn't designed to maximize attack power, but to conserve energy, achieving maximum effect with minimal expenditure. The Lightwings were adept at this.
Lulian kept a close watch on the enemy signals with quantum anchor probes.
The server analysis was complete.
"Enemy ship losses: 292; 12,547 remaining."
The results were lower than expected. Lulian ordered his strategists to analyze the discrepancy.
A few days later, an image arrived. It contained visible shortwaves and, within a specific frequency, showed countless strings connecting all Filament warships. There were tens of millions of these strings.
"The Unseen Filament…"
This was mentioned in the intelligence briefings.
Why were they called the Filament civilization?
From the beginning, most Federation scholars were analyzing it, drawing various conclusions. But the truth only became clear after the C missions discovered the "filaments" connecting Filament warships.
However, no one knew the purpose of these filaments, only that they existed, not that they were merely speculative.
"These filaments play a critical role."
A newly processed video was sent to Lulian's auxiliary brain.
The video tracked the entire battle, showing that the filaments never broke, not even under the phase deployment.
"Wait, even destroyed warships are connected by these filaments!"
Lulian analyzed the video and discovered something new. In among the millions of filaments, he saw that the destroyed Filament ships were also connected to other ships along the same filaments.
"These filaments aren't connected to conventional energy sources."
If they were based on fuel, the filaments would have broken long ago.
"Perhaps these destroyed ships passively connect to the filaments. The filaments might originate from a single point, branching out to other ships which then act as relays, connecting even more ships."
This was a breakthrough. Finding the source of the filaments would allow them to disrupt them, potentially crippling the Filament civilization's combat power.
"Initiate analysis. Identify which Filament warships act as the core nodes."
Lulian was serious. Every mission for a reincarnator was life-or-death; he had completed over 20,000.
The rewards for success were equally substantial.
The server analyzed the data for 21 hours, identifying 11 warships in protected positions.
"These might be decoys."
"Filament warships are essentially identical; I suspect they can modify their core ships, changing the filament source."
"If that's true, finding the core ship would be pointless."
"No, wait!"
Lulian's keen sense of combat detected something.
"What if the core ships only look different, but are internally the same? Then, to maintain the filaments, they'd require more energy reserves, reducing their offensive capabilities."
"That's it! Analyze based on that criterion."
"The swarms are nearing engagement with the Filament warships; this is a perfect opportunity."
As Lulian spoke, a light instantly blinded the Heavenly Chain's sensors. The last recorded image showed an enormous halo in space.
The halo opened like a human eye, dark at the center, scattering large amounts of matter. Some matter was pulled outwards, some inwards. At first glance, it was beautiful, like art.
But if you knew the truth, you'd know that the matter came from the destroyed swarms.
"The Pan, a weapon that exploits the difference in gravity between its center and outer ring to tear apart objects. This attack is ineffective against warships, but devastating against the swarms. The Filament civilization developed it within the last few thousand years specifically to counter them."
Tearing apart a warship required immense gravitational force, likely beyond their energy reserves.
But the swarms were much weaker; they could be destroyed with very little energy. The bright flash was generated by a miniature black hole at the center of the Pan, creating the gravitational pull.
"Do not retreat. Have some of the swarms collect the remains; the rest continue the attack."
The 1 million swarm nests spawned over 100 billion swarms. These weren't controlled by brain-worms but received direct commands from birth, flitting towards the enemy like moths to a flame.
The Filament warships reached the edge of the star system and were about to enter.
Large numbers of bio-engineered warships surged forth to meet them, firing over 100,000 beams of energy every second.
In a single day, Lulian received the battle report. Over 7,000 bio-engineered warships had been destroyed, a third of the total, while the enemy had only lost 1,400 ships.
The bio-engineered warships were cheap to produce, but the combat losses were putting the Federation at a disadvantage.
"Activate the AAA cannons!"
"Have the bio-engineered warships retreat and activate five super-swarm nests."
Super-swarm nests were standard issue for dreadnought fleets, with at least ten per fleet.
These were more massive than before, with diameters generally over 10,000 kilometers. The brain-worms within produced more powerful swarms, all enhanced by gene pools.
The massive super-swarm nests, dwarfing even the Heavenly Chain, began to move. They released enormous swarms, some exceeding 1000 meters, whose robotic strength and speed gradually accelerated to over 20,000 km/s.
Approximately four days later, the AAA cannons were ready.
"Activate!"
At Lulian's command, the AAA cannons covering the star's surface began drawing energy from the star. Visible, swirling matter was sucked into the massive devices.
There were over a thousand such devices, each acting like a massive dropper with its muzzle pointed towards the Filament warships.
Fire!
The AAA cannons, also known as All-Aspect Annihilator, were deployed on the star's surface. They absorbed the star's energy and released it in bursts at tremendous speed.
Each cannon could fire 710 energy bursts per second, each burst powerful enough to destroy a small planet.
The 1000 AAA cannons could accelerate the star's energy depletion by over 10,000 times. They were sucking the life out of the red dwarf, accelerating its aging by a factor of 100,000, reducing its lifespan from billions of years to less than a million.
Of course, that required continuous firing for hundreds of thousands of years.
Each blast from these cannons contained the equivalent of one month's total energy production for a Level 2 civilization.
This was one of the Galactic Federation's key weapons.
...
The first volley from the AAA cannons was devastating.
Without energy constraints, the AAA cannons didn't fire intermittently but continuously. Their lasers traveled in a straight line.
This form of attack had never been used in past Federation wars. The hit Filament warships activated their energy shields, expecting to withstand a single barrage, but it was a sustained assault. They watched helplessly as their energy levels plummeted, desperately trying to escape the beam.
But the AAA cannons were far more complex.
Think of a stream of water flowing onto an object; when you move that object, the stream bends slightly in the direction of the movement.
This was due to the object's absorptive properties.
Absorption stemmed from the gravitational force, the attraction at the molecular or even atomic level that caused a macroscopic effect.
Photons have four basic properties: reflection, scattering, absorption, and refraction. Under normal circumstances, photons don't exhibit absorption. However, by momentarily transforming a photon into an electron, they could exploit the electron's ability to be absorbed by a target.
In effect, the photons emitted by the AAA cannons momentarily destabilized upon impact, turning into electrons, creating a strong electromagnetic force that attached them to the target's surface.
This instability spread to other photons, turning them into electrons, extending the absorption range.
This wasn't simple traditional photoelectric effect; there was no mediating substance involved. It was a purer form of light-to-electron conversion.
With the traditional photoelectric effect, photons strike the surface of the enemy warship, causing electrons to escape from the atoms of the surface material. External photoelectric effect had to be used to make electrons leave the original target, if its internal, then it can only replenishes the enemy's energy.
However, the problem is that, whether they use the former or the later, the efficiency is quite low; thus it can't satisfy the demands for the weapon at all.
So, the AAA cannon used direct light-to-electron conversion.
Once established, Filament warships found themselves unable to escape the beam. Now it's no time to sharpen the knife for battle, the light directly broke through their defenses and obliterated the warships.
Within a short time, the Filament civilization lost over 2000 ships.
It was a surprise victory.
However, once they reacted, Filament warships used erratic maneuvers to break the AAA cannon's lock.
Lulian never intended to win the battle solely with the AAA cannons.
His true goal had been achieved: creating a breach in the Filament formation, and exploiting that breach for the swarms to infiltrate the Filament warships.
At this point, the Filament civilization couldn't use super-large weapons; they could only deploy small laser cannons to deal with the swarms.
Lulian directly connected his auxiliary brain to the Heavenly Chain's system, analyzing the movement patterns of every Filament warship. He finally found one that stood out.
This ship moved along the same path as the others, but upon closer inspection, it was constantly surrounded by other ships, never straying too far from them.
Based on this alone, Lulian couldn't confirm anything.
What truly confirmed it was the ship's noticeably weaker firing rate. It was still attacking, but only firing dozens of laser beams per minute. Larger-scale attacks, such as gravitational-based area-of-effect weapons, were absent.
"Lock onto that warship!"
"No false moves. We must kill it in one strike."
Lulian had observed long enough. Conventional attacks wouldn't work; he decided to contact Luna.
...
"This is the first time you've contacted me directly. How is the situation?" Luna's youthful voice came from the other end, lacking any severity but conveying a strong sense of confidence.
This wasn't the arrogance of a spoiled heir but the confidence that comes from years of success, of never failing. And these weren't trivial matters but triumphs in grand endeavors.
A wolf in sheep's clothing.
The Federation had genetic technologies to keep people eternally young; Lulian suspected Luna was one of them—appearing youthful but older than his grandfather.
His intuition was partially correct, though he underestimated Luna's true age. She was nearly 35,000 years old.
"The plan is proceeding as expected."
"However, some issues have arisen…"
Luna wasn't surprised; the battlefield was ever-changing.
"What issues?"
Lulian organized his thoughts. "You're aware of the Filament civilization's origins."
"During the battle, I discovered the existence of filaments. There are two possibilities. I initially believed the filaments were specific energy forms emitted by each Filament warship, connecting them."
"However, a new discovery suggests otherwise. The filaments originate from a single source. Theoretically, only one warship in the Filament fleet is emitting them."
Luna pondered this.
There were many theories about the Filament civilization's filaments, including Lulian's. Luna couldn't receive the raw data; it was too large for the tachyon device.
Therefore, she didn't know the accuracy of Lulian's information. What if his information was wrong?
"So what do you want?" She wanted to hear his plan.
Lulian was prepared.
"Right now, we only need to eliminate about one-third of the Filament warships. It seems like a lot, but it's a result of a surprise attack and conversion."
"Once the Filament civilization stabilizes, we'll be locked in a prolonged war."
"I also suspect that there's a problem with how the Filament civilization entered the star system. Based on initial predictions, they shouldn't have charged in so recklessly; they should have reconnoitered the system first."
"Since they didn't, the Filament civilization must have a devastating close-range tactic. Therefore, I plan to enter a defensive period."
"I can hold out for 10-12 years, so I request a super-antimatter displacement device to destroy the Filament civilization's core ship. It would also be a test; we don't know the exact function of the filaments. Destroying the core ship might help us understand them."
Lulian's voice was firm, without hesitation.
Luna smiled.
"Good. That kind of initiative is what the Federation needs in its military commanders."
Lulian was astonished. He hadn't expected Luna to agree so quickly; such requests usually required deliberation.
But he, as a reincarnator, was chosen by Luna, who had been observing him for centuries.
Lulian's battlefield intuition and his boldness in proposing innovative plans were rare in the Federation, where most officers rigidly followed established protocols.
If his theory was correct, Luna wouldn't just win the battle against the Filament civilization; this would be a resounding success for the Mortality Selection plan.
"On February 12th, 37,120 AD, at 00:00 hours, you will issue the command to fire!" Luna gave a precise time.
The super-antimatter displacement device.
It was one of her achievements in the last few millennia, built on the foundation of laser transmission!
Super-antimatter displacement was a material transmission technology based on laser transmission.
Original laser transmission converted matter into energy, transmitted it to a specific device, and then converted it back.
This limited its flexibility.
Therefore, Luna, drawing on a concept proposed by a Federation scholar, spent approximately 2000 years developing super-antimatter displacement technology.
It wasn't limited to two endpoints but allowed material to reappear anywhere along a designated path.
Luna had Ayla configure the super-antimatter displacement device and gave her the coordinates of the receiving device that Lulian now possessed, tasking her with calculating the trajectory and final location.
With all preparations complete, Luna saw a massive illuminated circle in space.
The circle's outer diameter was 1700 kilometers, the inner diameter 400 kilometers, and a surface area of 2.27 million square kilometers. It could encompass an entire medium-sized country on Earth.
Overall, it wasn't a flat disc, but a ring-shaped drill bit. What faced Luna was the rear, the drill bit facing outwards. That drill nose was an energy projection platform, which was facing outwards the star system.
A 100,000-meter-class warship was placed within the super-antimatter displacement device.
The warship quickly transformed into a beam of light.
Of course, Luna and any other lifeforms and machinery couldn't intercept it. The super-antimatter displacement device's beam was extremely focused, guaranteeing that no more than 0.1% of information was lost over 100 light-years. Theoretically, the beam would barely scatter within that distance.
Approximately seven years later…
Lulian had successfully drawn the Filament civilization into a prolonged battle.
Over the years, he had repeatedly detected Filament warships attempting to get close, but he always thwarted them with heavy losses of warships and swarms.
This reinforced his conviction that the Filament civilization possessed a powerful short-range (within 100 AU) combat weapon.
"The designated time is approaching. Initiate the all-out offensive."
Lulian issued the command.
The Federation's growth over the years, coupled with enhanced individual capabilities, had led to the streamlining of command structures; the adjutant had been eliminated, either to pursue other careers.
All orders within the Federation fleet were now highly efficient.
Lulian wasn't the planner; he was the decision-maker. Most planning came from fleet strategists, and the operational details were handled by the ship captains.
His command signified the culmination of extensive preparatory work.
The all-out offensive had been a long time coming.
The remaining 18,000 bio-engineered warships, accompanied by over 4 billion thousand-meter-class swarm units, charged towards the enemy. During the assault, all bio-engineered warships and swarm units completed gene pool transformations, shifting from support and defense to offensive configurations.
Gravitational wave weapons activated, creating hundreds of thousands of micro-black holes that enveloped the Filament warships.
Why did Lulian choose to attack now?
Because the best defense is a good offense!
If you can't predict the enemy's next move, you force them to react in ways you anticipate.
This puts you in control.
Of course, this approach would be suicide in conventional warfare. Lulian's motive was to provide cover for the super-antimatter displacement device.
And there was another reason.
Lulian stood rigid, anxiously monitoring the battlefield.
They were close enough.
If the Filament civilization had a short-range weapon, they would deploy it now. They had to realize this was all that was left of the Heavenly Chain's fleet.
What better time to act?
"The Filament civilization must be apprehensive. Why would I launch a full-scale attack now? This very question is their only hesitation."
Lulian was gambling.
Betting that the Filament civilization would make its move.
He was a decision-maker, a reincarnator. He had seen too many deaths in those over 20,000 missions.
He had no qualms about sending his soldiers to their deaths. This wasn't some gentle game; it was a real battlefield. On the battlefield, soldiers had to face death at any moment.
Sometimes death came from the enemy's decisions; other times, from your own.
The difference was that soldiers killed by enemy decisions didn't contribute much, only serving to deplete the enemy's ammunition.
Truly effective deaths always came from your own decisions, whether in ancient battles or in this high-tech interstellar war.
Only when the upper echelons made the decisions, weighing the losses against the gains, were the casualties worthwhile.
If this were a person, she may exclaim: "Fuck correct losses."
But that is war.
If you wanted to ensure that no one died, it wouldn't be war, but a game. Once the opponent got serious, became an adult, they could upend this naive fantasy at any moment.
The most important thing in war is to allow each soldier on the battlefield to do his bit.
This is what Lulian had been doing.
Now, all the soldiers sent out on the warships would be exchanged for information on the Filament civilization's short-range weapon and the opportunity to use the super-antimatter displacement device.
The only good news was that due to technological advancements, swarm units had replaced combat fighters.
So there is no need to allocate tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers for each ship. Thousands of soldiers are enough.
But it still led to tens of millions of loss in life.
Lulian forced himself not to dwell on it. He was single-handedly consigning these soldiers to their deaths—a truly terrifying executioner.
But ultimately, Lulian got what he wanted.
The filaments began to emit a destructive resonance.
Upon observation, each filament transformed into a wellspring of incredible energy, originating from outside.
The filaments were absorbing energy and circulating it along their length, not storing it within the warships.
The energy-rich filaments began to vibrate.
"Those are strings…"
Lulian realized the horrifying truth.
The filaments were an imitation of Planck-scale strings on a macroscopic level.
Those lines were energy. They absorbed energy and generated more through vibration. Vast amounts of energy were converted into matter along the filaments.
This matter wasn't used for direct attacks. Instead, it created gravitational disturbances, manipulating dark matter in the universe, forcing a secondary transformation of matter into Majorana fermions, leading to annihilation.
This amplified the filaments' original energy by a factor of 300. That immense energy was now being unleashed.
First, it contracted inwards, then it continuously expanded from the core in a single direction, like dye dropped into pure water.
The expanding energy linked to the filaments, forming a massive cocoon that enveloped the Federation fleet and swarm units.
Then came… the crushing.
...
"Gravity… the filaments are transmitting gravity!"
Lulian was stunned.
Using gravity wasn't unusual for Level 2 civilizations; it was practically a basic technique.
But their use was still relatively primitive. It's like comparing how ancient humans used fire versus how modern humans use fire; there was a huge difference.
Common gravity weapons used energy and mass to generate gravity, but what he was seeing was the Filament civilization attaching gravity to a filament and transmitting it.
This created a phenomenon where everything enveloped by the filaments collapsed towards a tiny gravitational point at the center.
It was an extremely small black hole, only about 1 meter in diameter, but due to the filaments, its gravitational reach was incredibly wide.
The immense gravity ensnared the Federation bio-ships.
They tried to accelerate away, but it was futile.
"Calculate!"
"Calculate now!"
Lulian demanded.
He needed to know the magnitude of the gravity transmitted by the filaments.
The calculation was quick. The required escape velocity was 232,400 km/s. In theory, they needed to exceed 77.5% the speed of light to escape the filament's gravity and the black hole's pull.
This was beyond the capabilities of the Galactic Federation.
Those ships were doomed to fall into the black hole's core.
Within the cocoon, the Filament warships weren't affected; the 1-meter black hole's gravity couldn't reach them.
"No wonder they wanted to engage at close range."
"Even though it's just a 1-meter black hole, if it exists long enough, it can consume everything."
They were facing a black hole. In effect, it's akin to the Earth's human when confronting nuclear weapons - they can only be intercepted and destroyed before the burst, not suppressed after they launched.
There was nothing he could do.
Lulian could only helplessly watch as the warships were dragged towards the black hole.
"Commander, stay calm."
"Don't forget we still have other options. Sever the Filament civilization's energy source, and that black hole can't be maintained for long."
A voice came over the comms. Lulian didn't recognize her, but she was likely a senior officer on the fleet.
The voice helped him regain his composure.
The warships weren't being directly sucked into the black hole's event horizon; it would still take time to reach the 1-meter point.
Lulian checked the time.
February 11, 37120 AD, 23:58:10.
"Is the super-antimatter transmission device ready?"
"We only need to fire the return beam. The beam carries other materials, reducing its speed to 90% the speed of light. Will it be accurate?"
Any error could lead to a failed super-antimatter displacement.
"All preparations complete. Launch is scheduled for zero point. We've adjusted the timing for relativity. Projected success rate is 98.1%."
The server analysis provided no comfort; it wasn't 100%. Though he knew nothing was ever certain, anything less than perfection felt like guaranteed failure.
He was anxious.
A key objective of the all-out offensive was to create an opening for the super-antimatter displacement, positioning the enemy fleet along the transmission path so the returning warship would appear directly in the center of the Filament formation.
Soon, countless photons carrying the designated re-materialization data were launched.
The two beams would converge shortly.
Since the Filament warships were close enough—just a few hundred astronomical units away—the transmission would only take two days.
The beams converged instantaneously, undetected by the Filament civilization.
When they finally observed it, a Federation 100,000-meter-class warship had materialized.
This warship wasn't quite like the others. To ensure the survival of the core server, it used a modular design.
Theoretically, a single server was composed of tens of thousands of modules. Losing a portion wouldn't cripple the server.
This allowed the warship to attack immediately upon rematerialization, instead of having to repair or replace the server.
The server reacted the moment the ship rematerialized, targeting the suspected Filament command ship.
The surrounding Filament warships hadn't even registered its presence; light still needed time to reach them. But as the new warship was now at that location, emitting light in every direction, it detected them first.
It was a time disparity.
The new warship itself carried no energy but had devices that could generate it. These devices absorbed ambient energy and then released it through the main cannon.
This was a unique warship—everything about it was single-use. Its energy absorption was extremely rapid; it could fully replenish its reserves in just two hours.
The dark energy cannon fired after two hours.
Roughly three hours later, the Filament warships finally detected the sudden appearance of the new ship.
They began to react.
But 2 hours was far too short. The dark energy cannon struck the Filament command ship without issue.
The command ship was instantly destroyed…
Two days later, Lulian received confirmation. Anxiously, he ordered all probes to monitor the state of the filaments.
Time ticked by. Lulian was intensely nervous.
If his assessment was wrong, not only would the fleet be lost, but the entire campaign could fail.
After 3 minutes and 28 seconds...
He finally saw the filaments disappear.
"Success! I was right!"
Lulian then received the mission completion notification as a reincarnator.
[Congratulations on completing series side quest: Total War (3)—Super-Antimatter Displacement.]
[You have received a reward: 100,000 Ability Currency.]
[You have unlocked the next stage of the side quest: Total War (4)—Defeat the Filament Civilization Fleet.]
No joy appeared on Lulian's face. He said, "Continue to execute the offensive."
"Even without the filaments, Filament warships are still powerful. We can't be complacent."
That was true.
The Filament warships' inherent combat capabilities far exceeded the Federation's.
It was too early to celebrate. He had to annihilate the entire Filament fleet to achieve success.
He wasn't doing it for the mission rewards but for his survival. A failed war meant death; any number of rewards wouldn't matter then.
This wouldn't be easy.