Three months later, one day in the Palm Universe, at the High-Dimensional Fortress Dock, Li Qing’s third batch of five Escort Ships was completed and launched.
There was no blind expansion.
Although a chief engineer could oversee the construction of up to ten Escort Ships at once, Li Qing considered that he couldn’t stay in the dock building ships all the time like a professional shipwright—he would definitely have to do other things in between, and would have to leave Jinmen for other places.
If he expanded blindly, he wouldn’t build many ships but would still have to pay wages the whole time, which was a bad deal.
Of course, the main reason was that he didn’t have enough capital.
If he had enough money to stockpile materials for several hundred or even a thousand Escort Ships in the Palm Universe’s dock, he could spend a few years out in the world and then come back to sell them all at once.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have that.
Over three months, a total of 15 Escort Ships—building five per month, selling them, buying materials, building and selling again—he had earned a total of 58.5 million.
Next, instead of continuing construction, he went to the Yu Shipyard, where the Hurricane-class Destroyer he had ordered had been completed and was ready for delivery.
After quickly completing a series of acceptance procedures, Li Qing saw the Elite Hurricane-class Destroyer moored in the dock, about fifty meters longer than a standard Gale-class Destroyer.
He boarded the ship and entered his information into the Warship Combat System, confirming control.
A Destroyer was more than twice the length of an Escort Ship, and its Bridge was also larger.
The Destroyer required 100 Clone Crew, 5 senior crew members, and one captain.
Besides the 20 million buyout for the Clone Crew, the monthly wages were 500,000 plus 1.25 million, with a basic maintenance fee of 500,000—a total monthly expenditure of 2.25 million.
The daily maintenance fee generally covered the daily needs—food, drink, and other essentials—of the hundred-plus crew members aboard the warship.
With the wages in place, along with the crew of the other Escort Ship, more than 160 crew members were quickly assembled.
“Captain, ready to depart!”
Li Qing, seated in the main command chair, waved his hand grandly.
The captain nodded and tapped rapidly on the Light-screen before his eyes, issuing a series of commands.
The warship trembled slightly, and the view beyond the enormous floor-to-ceiling observation glass in front of the Bridge began to slowly shift.
The massive dock base gradually slid out of sight.
From the outside, among the countless warships moored at the Yu Shipyard’s enormous space station, a warship slightly larger than an ordinary Destroyer slowly detached from the station and entered the starry void.
After the warship had traveled about a hundred kilometers from the shipyard space station, an aide beside him reported:
“Commander, incoming communication.”
Li Qing tapped, and a Light-screen popped open before his eyes.
A bald man with a right eye converted into a mechanical eye appeared before him, saluted, and said in a deep voice:
“Captain of Escort Ship One reporting to the Commander, requesting to join the formation!”
“Accepted!”
This was the other Escort Ship.
About twenty minutes later, a warship that looked no different from a common Escort Ship on the surface came alongside.
After exchanging a series of signals, the Escort Ship slowly moved to the Destroyer’s flank, maintaining an escort formation.
After carefully checking that both warships were in normal condition, Li Qing ordered the fleet to simultaneously activate their Hyperspace Engines and head toward the north of the star system.
Two hours later, the warships exited the Sub-light Speed State, appearing near a gas giant.
Through the glass at the front of the bridge, one could see a massive vortex in the void ahead, a pillar of light erupting from it, with densely packed warships moored all around.
This vortex was the entrance to a Subspace Fragment—in layman’s terms, an Instance entrance.
Instances come in two types.
The first refers to various Subspace Fragments, which are generally very dangerous.
After initial exploration, they are converted into repeatedly accessible Subspace Fragments, commonly known as Instances.
The second type is Instances formed by the projection of certain special events due to particular causes.
Each player can enter an unlimited number of Instances per month, but each Instance can only be entered once per month.
In other words, a single Instance can only be entered once a month, but one can enter different Instances without limit.
Moreover, once inside an Instance, any combat losses are just like reality—ships destroyed, crews dead.
There’s no way to salvage wreckage to recover part of the investment, and insurance companies won’t compensate for the losses.
The only silver lining is that no matter how you die inside an Instance, it only counts as a normal death, costing just five years of lifespan.
Even so, many players still enter an Instance every month.
The reason, of course, is the rewards within Instances.
In any Instance, completing a series of missions earns points. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
As long as your points reach the minimum threshold, you can choose to exchange those points for various Blueprints and safely leave the Instance.
From first-generation Railgun construction Blueprints all the way up to a full Battleship construction Blueprint set—as long as you have enough points, you can exchange for them all.
It can be said that Instances are the source of the vast majority of Blueprints in the entire New Universe.
Li Qing hadn’t come here to farm Blueprints; he only wanted to test the combat power of his two fully-equipped warships.
He applied to enter the Instance, and a light-screen quickly popped up before his eyes, showing that he was number 214 in the queue.
It looked like a long line, but in reality the wait wouldn’t be long.
While waiting in line, he reviewed the Instance’s information.
This Instance was called [Battle of Jinmen], a typical Instance formed by the projection of a special event.
Its historical background came from the final decisive battle fought here by the Yu clan several hundred years ago, in which they defeated the main force of the local alien civilization.
Upon entering the Instance, one would arrive at that historical moment several hundred years ago when the Yu Expeditionary Force defeated the alien civilization here, seized their home planet, and established Jinmen Province.
Players would participate in this battle as a mercenary fleet, with their performance determining how many points they earned.
Jinmen had four Instances in total—three related to the navy and one related to the army.
The Battle of Jinmen was the largest of them, and also theoretically the most profitable, because its highest reward was a Dreadnought Flagship construction Blueprint.
It was only “theoretically” because in several hundred years, very few had ever obtained the Dreadnought Flagship construction Blueprint.
On the Instance points leaderboard, only seven players had ever surpassed one hundred total points.
The Dreadnought Flagship Blueprint, ranked first on the Instance reward exchange list, required one hundred points to redeem—meaning at most only seven people could ever have obtained it.
Warships entered the Instance quickly.
The two warships kept moving forward toward the Instance entrance, and in less than half an hour it was his turn.
As a powerful traction force took hold, the two warships plunged headlong into the vortex, stirring up a surging tide of energy.
“This is a magnificent, epic battle!”
“Wealth and resources”
“Blood and Smoke”
“Survival and Destruction”
“The war of racial survival between the expeditionary force of the United Empire of Humanity and the Boniel Starsea Empire unfolds here. As a mercenary of the expeditionary force, what splendid performance will you deliver in this magnificent epic battle?”
Twisted characters slowly slid down the smooth surface.
The warship swayed gently, with massive explosions heard from time to time, but beyond the bridge glass was only a blur.
Before long, all the characters on the light-screen before him slid away, and the blur beyond the bridge glass gradually sharpened.
With a slight tremor of the warship, Li Qing suddenly found his two warships docked at a berth in a massive space station starport.
The shipboard radar quickly swept the surroundings.
Soon the light-screen before him lit up: a huge fleet led by a super warship over a dozen kilometers long was slowly departing the port.
“Hiss! A Titan Super-Flagship!”
That colossal hull, that iconic Doomsday Weapon muzzle—everything made Li Qing green with envy.
“A dream come true!”
Every naval commander dreamed of owning a Titan Super-Flagship, but only a precious few ever realized that dream.
What is a Titan Super-Flagship?
It is the most powerful warship in the starsea, bar none.
A hull a dozen or more kilometers long, unimaginable armor and shields, a T-slot Doomsday Weapon capable of blasting a planet the size of Earth to pieces in a single shot, plus all manner of powerful Super-Flag Field Halos—when all these factors combine, the sudden arrival of a Titan Super-Flagship on a battlefield can often reverse the tide of war in an instant.
With a reverent heart, Li Qing watched the massive fleet depart the base.
A layer of field halo covered the entire fleet, and as space violently distorted, the huge fleet, wrapped in the Titan Super-Flagship’s halo, jumped away together.
What is a Titan Super-Flagship?
This is a Titan Super-Flagship.
A Super-Flag Class Warp Engine can penetrate the vast majority of interception and Interference Fields, carrying a fleet of tens of thousands of main warships directly onto the battlefield and instantly reversing the tide of war.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t qualified to witness the majesty of this Titan Super-Flagship, and had never seen one before.
Neither Qinghe nor Jinmen had ever seen a war large enough to warrant deploying a Titan Super-Flagship.
It wasn’t until long after the fleet had departed, when the spatial ripples from the jump of tens of thousands of ships had faded, that Li Qing came back to his senses, composed himself, and checked the Instance mission.
The Instance mission was simple—it was a pitched battle, so naturally, it meant fighting.
There were no fancy tasks: just three battlefields, one large and two small.
Players chose a battlefield to join and earned points based on their kill count there.
Based on his strength rating, he earned 0.1 points for sinking an enemy Escort Ship, 0.5 points for a Destroyer, 2 points for a Cruiser, 20 points for a Battleship, and 500 points for a Flagship. The source of this chapter is novelping.com.
Point gain was determined by each player’s strength—the weaker the player, the more points earned; the stronger the player, the fewer points for sinking a warship.
If Li Qing had a Battleship, sinking an Escort Ship might only earn him 0.01 points, and sinking a Battleship might only earn 5 points.
Li Qing didn’t hesitate, directly choosing Battlefield No. 2 among the three battlefields—one of the two secondary battlefields.
While waiting in line earlier, he had looked up some information.
The difficulty of this Instance was dynamic—the battlefield situation was different every time you entered.
Aside from the main battlefield, the conditions of the two smaller battlefields changed each time as well, so there was no such thing as an easy spot for farming points.
Besides, Li Qing had never thought about farming a lot of points, let alone farming a Dreadnought Flagship Blueprint.
He was only here to test out the power of his two ships.
And when he entered the battlefield later, he wasn’t going to charge straight in.
He would just cruise around the edges of the battlefield, and if things looked bad, he would run immediately, waiting until the Instance automatically ended after 24 hours and teleported him out.
Are you kidding?
He only had these two ships—one Destroyer and one Escort Ship.
What right did he have to destroy that many enemy warships and escape unscathed from a chaotic battlefield with tens of thousands of combatants?
If any random Battleship’s main guns locked onto him, a fully-equipped Escort Ship would die instantly, and a fully-equipped Destroyer could withstand at most two shots.
How was he supposed to fight?
Rely on a Psionic?
If he were a Storm-class Psionic, he might be able to find an opportunity to destroy a damaged Battleship with a single Psionic Storm.
The problem was, he wasn’t.
The second battlefield was not in this star system, but in a star system within six jumps north of Jinmen.
The alien civilization had a super-large mining planet here, so they had built a Star Fortress and stationed a fleet.
The battle had already begun.
After accepting the mission, Li Qing’s two warships left the base and flew toward the Wormhole at the edge of the star system.
The star system was filled with warships of the expeditionary force and mercenaries, and the neighboring star systems were the same.
Especially along the main shipping lanes, every planet had an outpost built on it, equipped with jammers and interception blockers to prevent enemy warships from crossing directly at Sub-light Speed and decapitating them.
It was worth mentioning that this Instance projected the Battle of Jinmen, covering all star systems within a hundred light-years centered on Jinmen.
In theory, one could leave the three major battlefields and go elsewhere, but doing so would be considered desertion, and all previously accumulated points would be wiped to zero.
The benefit was that you could leave the Instance alive.
As they approached the star system next to the battlefield, Li Qing stood up and said to the senior crew members behind him:
“We are about to enter the battlefield. I ask all of you to work together and face this powerful enemy! After the battle, everyone will receive a bonus allowance of one month’s salary.”
The senior crew members and captain of the Destroyer, as well as the captain and senior crew members of the Escort Ship on the communications channel, all nodded solemnly in acknowledgment, while the crew members on the channel showed delight upon hearing this.
Li Qing nodded.
Morale was usable.
Although both the crew members and the captain were all Blank Slates, the upcoming battle would still depend on their performance.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want good captains—it was that crew members and captains with good talents simply couldn’t be found.
Although Jinmen had a massive professional academy district, producing a huge number of graduates of various professions available for recruitment every year—and among them there were certainly no shortage of Green-name and Blue-name talents, with the occasional Purple Epic-grade crew member or captain—these outstanding individuals were already targeted by headhunting companies and signed to contracts before they even graduated from the academies.
To recruit these outstanding captains, let alone the far-above-average salaries, you had to go through these headhunting companies and pay an additional price.
Most crucially, in many cases you simply couldn’t recruit them at all.
It wasn’t just that their numbers were few—more importantly, it depended on whether these captains with excellent talents thought you were worth their time.
To put it bluntly, in the low-end market you could recruit freely, as long as the salary was right.
But excellent captains get to pick their commanders—it’s a two-way selection.
If they think you, as a commander, have no future, they won’t give you the time of day.
So after learning how things worked in this regard, Li Qing never even considered trying to find a good captain.
He just grabbed a batch of Blank Slate crew members to serve as captains and made do for now.
After all, the vast majority of players were in the same boat—six of one, half a dozen of the other, with no one at an advantage.
An hour later, the two warships plunged headlong into the wormhole.