Chapter 1582: The Game of Quantity
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
A little battleship had just thrown the festered army into disorder. It transpired that Hao Ren’s analysis of the offshoots of the Mad Lord was correct. They seriously lacked intelligence. Even if they had one, it had all given way to the violently destructive tendency. If there were a more ‘attractive’ and threatening target appeared within their perception, these almost instinctive monsters would immediately shift their attention and started a meaningless pursuit.
This diversion tactic was not a panacea, however. The reason why the festered army was an army was that they still retained a minimum level of concerted action and coordination. They would show interest in the new target within their range of perception, but they would not give up their original target.
The encirclement around the celestial wreckage was only experiencing chaos and disruption, they did not pursue the Petrachelys into outer space.
But it was enough; Hao Ren needed only to disrupt the encircling army.
On the earth covered in green vegetation, the sprites could clearly see what happened in space. They saw the silver-white battleship that popped up out of nowhere fighting the bad guys single-handedly. The courageous and heroic battle moved the sprites deeply. They cheered for the ally while watching the silver-white spacecraft flying in the sea of enemies before it fled out into outer space.
“It flew away! I flew away! The spaceship flew away!”
“It did not come to help. It just lost its way and bumped into those monsters by accident. We are finished!”
“We are going to die! We are going to die! We are going to die!”
Do you have something better to say other than ‘we are going to die’?
“Wait a minute, look! Something comes out from the background!”
While the sprites fell in a state of chaos again, there were some looked up at space above and saw something strange emerging out of the dark cosmos.
The noisy sprites did not hear the words of their fellows at first. But they all became quiet after a while as there was not just one, but thousands of things coming out of nowhere in space. It was simply hard to not notice that.
Rippling light films appeared in space. When the films faded, silver-white spacecraft, which was as if the hybrid body of insect and machine lunged out. They were as if reapers coming out from the shadows, and also as if locusts drooling at the crops. Those cold and ruthless metal creatures swarmed the space and stared at all the festered monsters.
Now, the besiegers had become the besieged.
Even the unintelligent festered monsters hesitated for a moment in the face of this sudden change of event. Before the monsters came to their senses, the armed drones had launched an attack. The drones carried a double-barrel main gun, equivalent to one-third of its body size. The drone kept its weight to its minimum. Asides from its fuel, propulsion unit, and shields, the rest of the body of the drone was built for the main gun. The armed drones are mobile turrets. The moment they rolled off the assembly line, there were ever-ready for the battlefield. And now, the day had come and the drones, at last, came in handy on the battlefield.
Thousands of muzzles fired at once, blasting the enemies with their lethal laser. Explosions rose silently in different corners of the battlefield. The festered monsters finally came to their senses and instinctively launched a counterattack. But their formation was in disarray.
The minions of the Mad Lord had left their formation to pursue the enemy. Now, this dark army was in havoc as many monsters had strayed from their positions on the fringes of the encirclement. This had further worsened the already chaotic battlefield.
The drones seized this opportunity. Under the drive of the instruction sets, they quickly leveraged the situation. With their super agility and short-distance warp-jump capability, the drones promptly locked on the festered monsters that strayed off their formation and shot them out of space. They took advantage of the weak defenses and stormed into the enemy formation to wreck as much havoc as they could.
When observing from a distance, it was clearly a divide-and-attack strategy. The silver-white drones were as if mercury surrounded the patches of black mud, finding and breaking into whatever gaps they could and devouring the black dirt up very quickly.
The festered monsters were no sitting ducks either. They had lost the first-strike and positional advantages, but they by themselves were formidable weapons. In comparison, the individual armed drones were relatively weak in terms of combat strength. They had high-powered main guns and agility, but that did not change the fact that they were vulnerable individually.
But what the drones lacked in quality made up for with quantity. It was hard to understand there were how many of them in numbers.
When the number of nests reached a particular level, they would multiply far faster than you could record in numbers. When the warp-jump links were smooth, their jump speed would exceed what your brain could perceive.
So, the vast number of drones began to overwhelm the festered monsters, which also liked to drown their opponents with numbers.
When dirty energy beams and bombs of flesh and blood hit the drones, they burst into fire and exploded. But with every downed drone, there were a hundred of new drones joined the battle.
The light films in space were still glowing. Waves of armed drones came out of stealth mode to join to fighting.
Further away, the flashes at the end of warp jump burst like starlight. An endless army of reinforcement from various parts of Star Cluster X and the home planet of the Executors continued to arrive.
When seeing the minions of the Mad Lord earlier, Hao Ren had already realized that this was going to be a deep sh*thole. And now, he was in it. So, before Nolan came, he had the drone cluster to send reinforcement.
The drone cluster had taken root in nearly one-fifth of Star Cluster X. Drone factories continuously churned out combat units around the clock, so Hao Ren had no shortage of army. The battlefield was not far from the areas under the control of the drones. The fleet managed to arrive in the second half of the battle.
The reinforcement came much later than the drones lurking in stealth mode in the vicinity of the battlefield. But by the looks of it, they had just made it in time.
The drones seemed to have encircled the enemy. The silver-white streams of drones began to swallow the black legion bit by bit.
The sprites looked up, and silver-white filled nine-tenths of their field of vision.
“This is strange,” said Hao Ren. The Petrachelys had left the central battle zone, but the drones on the fringe of the battlefield were streaming back real-time visual of the battle. At first, Hao Ren saw the chaotic minions had gained some ground with their fierce counterattacks, but when the drones employed the divide-and-attack tactic, the monsters began to fall in disarray. “Those monsters look very ferocious, but they lack strategy. Even their seemingly menacing battleships make little impact and receive no cover and coordination from the escort forces. So, although the drones have the number to crush them, these monsters should not behave like sitting ducks ready to be slaughtered—if they have a strategy.”
“How can there be a strategy when the Mad Lord has infected them?” Vivian said with her armed crossed. “Did Lockmarton not go insane at last?”
“I am just saying. These minions of the Mad Lord, which could fly in space, are not much better than their cousins on the surface. At least, they are equally unintelligent, which is kind of boring.”
Hao Ren was silent after that, focusing his attention on the visual on the hologram. The battle was drawing to an end, and he would like to know how those monsters were finished off.
The legion of festered monsters had mostly crumbled under the crushing force of the drones. Charred flesh fragments and twisted metal wreckage floated everywhere. Many of the wreckage and bodies hit on the shield of the space continent and vaporized in an instant. The drones had cornered the last group of monstered and were rapidly finishing them off.
The monsters struggled to fight back and frantically tried to get away the encirclement of the drones.
Hao Ren quietly watched.
He saw those monsters suddenly paused for a moment before lunging at once in a direction.
The smaller, faster units charged ahead in the front to become cannon fodder and meat shields. Those with unique abilities and looked like swollen tumor floated around the formation to provide energy protection. The only remaining black battleship of the monster army was in the middle, using its more efficient auxiliary guns to clear way out for the group.
Hao Ren’s face changed from indifferent to stunned.
But the struggle of the monsters ended there. They had shown a strange behavior of order at the last moment and seemed to work, but the vast number of armed drones was too much for the monsters to handle.
Millions of guns fired at and annihilated the black battleship and its escorts at once.
The chaotic battle ended. But it left an everlasting impact in Hao Ren’s mind.