Chapter 449: The Second Dreadnought

Song Chi moved fast. The moment he got the news, he almost immediately rushed back to Dragon-Spine Continent.

Of course, before that, he left a spatial anchor from his battleship out in the starry sky beyond.

In just a few hours, through countless trips, he managed to transport nearly ten thousand Hellfire Mechs produced recently by the Family.

No one else could’ve pulled that off. After all, each Hellfire Mech is nearly a hundred meters tall, and the compression modules need cooldowns. But with access to the Omniverse Market, Song Chi could haul a huge batch of them in one go.

When Song Dingbang and the others saw Song Chi deliver all the mechs, they were stunned—but more than anything, thrilled. With nearly ten thousand Hellfire Mechs, the family’s results in the coming battles would only get better.

The massive fleets lingered in the starry expanse for several more days. Finally, three days later, the order came—the armada surged forward, swarming toward the Calamity Star Floating-land.

The ships still moved as before, coordinating in their established fleet groupings.

High Command didn’t mix things up at random either, letting each fleet stick to its own joint formation. After all, these groups had been fighting side by side for decades—they knew each other inside out. Splitting them up suddenly would only hurt combat effectiveness.

The Song Family fleet was still mixed in with the Stark–Morningstar Principality’s joint fleet. All six Dreadnoughts were present, but just as the summons was about to arrive for three Star-Annihilator-class ships, chaos erupted among the Song Family fleet.

One of the Tianmai Zhulu-class Cruisers suddenly opened its hatch. Right after, a figure leapt out from the cruiser.

Off in the distance, Song Chi used his Dual Pupils to catch sight of the figure’s face in an instant—which was exactly why he felt such a surge of delight.

“It’s the Prime Ancestor!”

Moments later, shouts of shock burst through the Song Family’s comm group.

“It’s the Prime Ancestor! Hah! I knew it—how could the Prime Ancestor fail his breakthrough that easily? The Unmoving Vajra is the strongest battleship our Family has, no question.”

“Don’t jinx it! Battleship, my foot!”

“Yeah yeah—unless I’m mistaken, the Prime Ancestor’s reached the sixth rank. Ha! We have a second Dreadnought in the Song Family now!”

……

Almost as if he was answering everyone’s excitement, Song Shiyuan, after dashing out of the Zhulu-class Cruiser, let a faint light glow at the center of his brow—and called forth the Unmoving Vajra in its miniaturized form.

With a blazing flash, the Unmoving Vajra’s hull expanded at tremendous speed, growing into a Dreadnought over 100,000 meters long.

“Knew it…”

Inside the Heavenly Ruin’s command center, Song Chi breathed out, still unsurprised.

Honestly, none of this came as a surprise to him.

Earlier, he’d tried to offer the Fifth-Tier Moon Spring to the Elders, saying it was for the Prime Ancestor. They’d all just laughed and waved him off. From that moment, Song Chi knew the Prime Ancestor had broken through.

……

Encrypted Calm-Sea Dragon-Xiang group chat:

“Song Wujian: Impressive. Not even fifty years, and you’ve pushed the Guiding Technique all the way to level 60!”

“Song Xingru: Let’s see the Stark Family try to act smug now!”

And everyone pretty much agreed with Song Xingru.

On multiple occasions, the Stark Family had leveraged their two Dreadnought captains to snag a few extra benefits during distribution—not that the numbers were outrageous, but to the other families, it always left a sour taste.

Only the Chenxing Family hadn’t been affected; after all, they had two Dreadnought captains of their own, so the Stark Family never tried to push them around.

Now that the Song Family had two Dreadnoughts too, they’d be getting a bigger cut in the post-battle loot.

“Song Shiyuan: Just got lucky. That Nirvana Tempering Fruit worked wonders. With a fifty-thousand-year-old Deep-Sea Pearl and a superior body-tempering elixir, I barely managed to break through.”

“Song Dingbang: That’s what matters. Just in time for the decisive battle—Heaven’s blessing upon the Song Family!”

……

Compared to the lively chats on the Song Family side, the rest of the Joint Fleet’s factions felt the opposite.

“Song Shiyuan—my gut was right all along. Like he’d ever fail a breakthrough? The sheer power of his ship is still burned into my memory. It could probably rival even the ultimate dreadnoughts of the Immortal Houses!”

“The Song Family’s kept things hidden deep. In a few hundred years, they’ve raised two Dreadnought captains in a row!”

The Eagle Family felt it most deeply. The other principalities were steadily pulling ahead, and their own internal divisions still dragged them down.

On the outside, they looked like they were barely holding parity with the others, but that was far from the truth.

A high-grade Mobile Battlestar is just a machine. It can’t become a living, breathing Dreadnought captain.

You could see this clearly from the last Grand Council—every other family sent a personal representative except the Eagle Family.

That meant the Eagle Family had no idea what went on at the meeting. With the others all staying tightlipped, the exclusion was glaring—and the Eagle Family’s captains felt it worst of all.

But even so, the deadlock couldn’t be broken. None of the three faction leaders could budge—abysses waited behind each of them. Any move, and they’d all be torn apart.

The one shred of hope? The leader of the loyalist faction was approaching his limit. If he couldn’t advance to sixth rank within the next century, his side wouldn’t have a captain left—and that would finally wreck the three-way balance, maybe even set the Eagle Family back on track.

Most of the high-ups in the joint fleets could guess what the Eagle Family was hoping for. Everyone knew the loyalist captain’s age—it couldn’t be kept secret.

But deep down, the core members of the other clans just sneered. That hope was way too naive.

Every faction in this grand expansion war had gained massively. By the end, the others would only grow stronger—and the gap would just widen.

Even if the Eagle Family sorted out their faction mess, the gulf would never close again.

Maybe the Eagle Family had pulled in some rewards from this frontier campaign?

Don’t kid yourself. Working together for a while doesn’t mean they’re friends.

Once the campaign ends, the pressure on the Eagle Family will only get heavier. No one’s going to let them catch up—no way.

Unless the Eagle Family fixed all their problems before the war, and then, with a stroke of luck, scraped together enough from their war gains to force out a Dreadnought… That was their only shot, but they missed it.

……

At that moment, if you looked outward from deep within the Calamity Star Floating-land, you’d see an utterly overwhelming sight.

Everywhere you looked, fleets upon fleets of starships surged in from all directions, blotting out the sky so densely that the Calamity Star defenders patrolling inside the shields were overtaken with pure terror.

Soon enough, the two Seventh-Tier Calamity Star overlords responded to the alert—one after another, they appeared.

On the scale of the shattered Sea of Stars, these two were like gods incarnate. Just by standing still above the horizon, countless cosmic laws shimmered and danced around them.

Compared to the primal laws that manifested in the original secret realm, the source laws radiating from these two were just as mighty. They were like two mobile, living primal domains—and the moment they showed up, all eyes locked on them.

Next to that, the captains of the Yaohan Kingdom’s Star-Annihilator ships barely registered. Without summoning their own star-destroyers, the three Star-Annihilator captains could almost be overlooked.

But then again, the Star-Annihilator is a captain’s greatest trump card. Comparing crews without the ships just isn’t fair.

Sensing that this fleet wasn’t like those probing attacks of the past, both Calamity Star overlords raised their arms.

Pitch-black starlight swelled in their palms. In an instant, two nearly solid miniature Death Calamity Stars took shape, supported by those ancient, muscle-knotted, dusky-red arms—and the overlords pushed them out beyond the protective shield.

Dim starlight from the Death Calamity Stars spread everywhere. These stars, remnants from the multiversal era, held unfathomable power. Even Seventh-Tier overlords could only bring out a fraction of their might. Still, under that gray light, vast swathes of space started collapsing at breathtaking speed.

Buzz… buzz… buzz!

Space collapsed behind the rolling wave of darkness, rushing toward the advancing Ember fleets.

But not a single Ember warship hesitated—they charged in fearlessly.

Why? A certain Star-Annihilator captain’s voice had already echoed in everyone’s ears, telling them not to be afraid.

Just then, a dazzling gold light burst from the Star-Annihilator on the far right.

As soon as the gold radiance bloomed, it was like the pure opposite of the Death Calamity Stars’ sinister glow.

As doom spread and space collapsed, the piercing golden light restored everything to normal, freezing it in place.

The source was a golden component on the Dongli Xiao Family’s Star-Annihilator—a Sanctum Domain Component strengthened up to level 80.

Boundary Stone lv80

Quality: Gold

Effect: Boundary

Effect 2: Space resistance +9200

Effect 3: Spatial domain condensation

……

When it comes to knowing the Calamity Star Race, no one except the race itself understands them better than the Yaohan Kingdom top brass.

The power of the Death Calamity Star is their signature move, so of course the three Star-Annihilator captains were ready.

This Boundary Stone component was the perfect counter.

With ease, it neutralized the Calamity Star overlords’ most devastating area-of-effect attack—something those overlords had never expected.

Meanwhile, the prows of all three Star-Annihilators erupted in rainbow brilliance as their Star-Annihilator Cannons powered up together.

Judging by the looks of it, they were about to unleash that unimaginable destructive force straight at the Calamity Star Floating-land’s shields.

Naturally, the two overlords inside wouldn’t just stand by. When they saw their attack nullified, they instantly changed tactics.

Whoosh, whoosh!

This time, they still used the paired Death Calamity Stars—but instead of letting them radiate freely, they hurled them at full force beyond the shield with a roar.

Having seen before what kind of devastation those Death Calamity Stars could unleash, almost every captain instinctively held their breath.

It was chilling just imagining what would happen if both overlord-summoned Death Calamity Stars exploded among the fleets.

“Trying the same trick again? What a joke!”

From the command center of the Fenglang Juxu Star-Annihilator, a cold laugh rang out.

That blitz years back—in the dead center of the blast, it was that exact trick that took out several Dreadnoughts at once.

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