Chapter 181: The Warstar’s Corridor: Calculated Gambits

It was just like watching a massive drill bore straight down into the surface of a planet.

Everyone stood there, dumbfounded.

Meanwhile, the Xitoris Kingdom’s commander was now fully convinced that these people were exactly who His Majesty the King had described.

But…

“Where do you think the king found these people?”

“Commander, don’t you think their warship, even though it doesn’t look the same as our Seawolf-class, actually has a pretty similar design style?”

“You mean…”

“Yeah, unless I’m completely off, that’s the case!”

The adjutant nodded in agreement.

Some things might be a secret to the average kingdom soldier.

But at their rank, they’d at least heard a bit here and there.

Like, for instance, where the Seawolf-class really came from.

Or why the kingdom had pushed for such a massive migration, setting most of the territory as restricted zones that nobody could enter.

They were in the know about some of that.

Because the king had managed to latch onto a powerful advanced civilization, and once the migration was finished, even those lands now designated as restricted would be handed over to that civilization.

In exchange, they’d get military support.

Of course, giving away half the kingdom was hard for most to accept.

But after learning the Seawolf-class came from that civilization—and that they’d keep getting more in the future—

Most people just went quiet.

One option was to turn around and fight an advanced civilization.

The other was giving up half their territory to get higher tech warships, then using those ships to seize even more land from other civilizations.

When you put it like that, anyone could do the math.

“You don’t think they’re from a Level 4 civilization, do you?”

“That’s impossible…”

“Then how else do you explain the way they showed up?”

That question completely floored the second-in-command.

Right, if they weren’t Level 4, none of this made sense.

My god, just what kind of backer had their king managed to find?

How powerful did this ‘thigh to hug’ actually have to be?

——

Ten hours later.

After burning through more than thirty thousand quantum bombs and unleashing wave after wave of massive ion beam strikes,

the Houyi had carved a safe corridor through the asteroid belt.

It wasn’t just the soldiers of the Xitoris Kingdom who were stunned—even the troops of the Totran Kingdom could only stare, wide-eyed.

So, for a full ten hours, other than some early token attempts at harassment, they eventually just stopped reacting.

After all, this was no ordinary space battlefield—it was the twisted, rock-choked asteroid belt.

That meant, no matter where an attack came from, it could never be far from the Houyi. If you tried, you’d just get blocked by asteroids and debris; there was no clear approach.

And if you did get close enough to shoot…

They’d just lob a quantum bomb your way. Even hiding behind an asteroid wouldn’t save you.

Warship, asteroid—blown to nothing in one shot.

After losing over a hundred warships but barely even scratching the Houyi, they finally gave up.

With its deflection armor and the sheer thickness of its hull,

mag rail cannons—especially those still generations behind the Federation’s—

posed little threat unless you had a fleet pouring fire on the same target nonstop. A handful of ships just weren’t enough.

The Federation’s Warstar might be nothing more than scrap metal to a Level 4 civilization, or easily destroyed by Level 3,

but for Level 2 civilizations, it was a true super warship.

Soon, the Xitoris Kingdom’s fleet made their way safely through the corridor the Houyi had blasted open, coming out the other side of the asteroid belt.

Meanwhile, more than ten thousand Totran Kingdom warships massed just beyond the safe corridor, forming up about 150,000 kilometers away—the exact edge of the Seawolf-class’s ion beam reach.

They’d lost the asteroid belt, but didn’t retreat to the opposite end to rush toward the interstellar current and the capital region.

Simple reason: just as the attacking forces could only move through the current a few ships at a time, retreating would face the same bottleneck—only three to five warships per wave.

Even if they moved fast, rushing through every minute, that was their best case scenario.

So if they tried to withdraw, most of them would end up trapped and wiped out at the current’s mouth. Maybe a few thousand might get out, but most would be lost here.

And even those three or five thousand who escaped wouldn’t be able to hold the capital region.

So with all that in mind, it was better to make their stand right here!

This spot didn’t have the huge advantage of the current’s mouth, but the corridor was still narrow—only a dozen or twenty warships could pass through at a time.

That was still a pretty solid defensive position.

In the next moment, battle erupted in full.

On one side, crossfire rained down at the mouth of the corridor. On the other, troops surged out, building a perimeter—setting up a beachhead for the following waves.

And as for the Houyi…

“Commander, should we join the fight?”

“I’ve got a new tactic I want to try…”

Lin Yu paused, deep in thought, then finally spoke.

In this situation, he had no intention of charging out for a direct slugfest.

That just wouldn’t make sense.

He only had one warship. Even with quantum bombs, he couldn’t take down enemies as fast as Tuoba’s entire regiment.

That’s why, back in the Blue-Eye Tribe’s royal court battle, the Ziyang Empire’s kill tally for twenty thousand warships ended up being several times that of the Houyi.

And that was with the Houyi doing most of the fighting early on.

“A new tactic?”

“That’s right. George, let me ask you—right now, could you pull off a direct strike on their flagship?”

At that, George studied the tactical star chart in front of him, deep in thought.

“No. Even though I can identify their flagship, the formation is just too thick. Even if we use the Houyi’s main gun, we’d never punch clean through to hit the flagship buried in the center.”

“And quantum bombs wouldn’t do the trick either. At best, you’d damage a few warships on the flanks.”

Lin Yu nodded at George’s answer.

Realistically, that was all true. No flaw in his logic.

But…

Was Lin Yu the kind of guy who played by the book?

Definitely not!!

“Bai Jun, how long is the cooldown for maxed-out hyperspace engine activation?”

“Thirty-eight minutes. After every hyperspace jump, there’s residual radiation buildup inside the engine. You have to purge it before you can use it again, or you risk something going wrong—even total engine loss.”

Bai Jun, the helmsman, answered on the spot, hardly needing to think.

He’d long since committed those details to memory.

“But what if I just want a super-short hyperspace jump—say, a hundred to two hundred thousand kilometers?”

“Uhh…”

Bai Jun was stumped.

Wait, for a jump that short, you want to use hyperspace travel?

Even flying it normally, the Houyi could cover that in a few minutes anyway…

“Never mind all that. Just answer me—if we did that, how long to restart the hyperspace engine?”

“In theory, you wouldn’t need to purge radiation. The whole jump would only take a thousandth of a second, and while there would be some tiny radiation residue left inside, it’s so small you can ignore it. But, even then, it still takes about thirty seconds of prep before you can run the engine again!”

“Perfect!”

Lin Yu looked satisfied with that answer.

Then he turned to George.

“George, say you were commanding the enemy fleet and the Houyi suddenly materialized dead center in your formation—”

“How long would it take for you to reposition your ships and launch a focused attack?”

Lin Yu threw another question his way.