“Boom!”
The moment they passed through the wormhole, two oddly-shaped destroyers charged straight at them, with seven escort ships of the same style behind them.
Eight M-slot Medium Electromagnetic Cannons opened fire simultaneously, striking Li Qing’s warship just as it emerged from the wormhole.
“Notice: Your warship has been hit by a Generation 3 Electromagnetic Cannon (Medium), dealing 300 + 25% shield adjustment = 375 points of Kinetic Impact Damage to your Warship Shield.”
“Notice: Your warship has been hit by a Generation 3 Electromagnetic Cannon (Medium), dealing…”
There were eight such notices in total.
That single wave of concentrated fire dealt a full 3,000 points of Kinetic Impact Damage.
Fortunately, destroyers were thick-skinned and could take it—if it had been an escort ship, its Energy Shield would probably have been blown apart in that one salvo.
Having just jumped through the wormhole, evasion was simply impossible.
Li Qing himself was caught somewhat off guard and could only immediately order the warship to open up the distance.
But there was no need—he had already given the order.
The captain promptly commanded the ship to turn broadside, and all four L-slot Main Guns and twelve M-slot Generation 5 Electromagnetic Cannons began charging.
Since they were already within the enemy’s firing range, they were naturally within their own range as well—and the Psionic skill added 20% to firing range, which was extremely powerful.
“Boom boom boom!”
As rings of distortion rippled from the muzzles of the destroyer’s four main guns and blinding fire erupted, all four Advanced Kinetic Railguns fired at once, precisely striking the enemy destroyer marked as Target One.
The tremendous power tore through Target One’s Energy Shield on the spot, leaving four massive craters in its armor.
Large swathes of Alloy Armor were ripped apart by the enormous kinetic energy impact.
“Warship, maintain constant speed and fall back!”
The order came from the destroyer’s captain.
Meanwhile, Li Qing was observing the battlefield situation in the surrounding starfield.
As the commander, his task was to observe the overall situation and issue orders for the entire fleet—the actual combat was up to the captain.
Back when he had served as the escort ship’s captain himself, he’d had to command.
Now that he had hired a captain, he certainly wasn’t going to overstep.
Never mind that the man was merely a Base-stat Captain with only a Level 3 destroyer combat skill—the most critical skill—he was still a professional.
In terms of command ability, he was absolutely better than Li Qing.
“Base-stat” only meant weak skills and limited potential, but the fundamental professional skills were still up to standard.
Thanks to the Psionic skill’s 20% speed bonus and 20% range bonus, the new captain used his superior speed to open the distance, keeping the range at a point where the enemy ships were within the firing arc of all his guns, while the enemy couldn’t reach him at all.
It wasn’t until the fourth combined salvo, five minutes later, that Target One was finally sunk.
One had to admit, destroyers really were far tougher than escort ships.
His four L-slot Main Guns plus twelve M-slot electromagnetic cannons had a total salvo damage of over twenty-five thousand—any escort ship, whatever its configuration, would be one-shot.
But this destroyer, with only a Tier 3 configuration, had stubbornly endured four full salvos before going down.
This was the advantage of configuration and skills.
They were both destroyers, but the enemy couldn’t catch him, couldn’t hit him, and couldn’t escape—reduced to being beaten passively.
The brutal sinking of one destroyer scared off the other.
Li Qing ordered a pursuit, but two enemy escort ships moved to intercept from either side—Li Qing could only admire their courage.
And then, there was no “then.”
Sinking an Escort Ship earned 0.1 points, two of them 0.2 points.
Sinking a Destroyer earned 0.5 points.
He was still a long way from one hundred points.
Moreover, Li Qing found that these points weren’t easy to earn.
The enemy wasn’t as dumb as the Wild Mobs he usually encountered—they would intercept, use simple tactics, decisively flee when they couldn’t win, and if they couldn’t escape, they would throw out cannon fodder to block pursuit.
This was no different from a normal commander.
In terms of command ability alone, Li Qing wasn’t really that much stronger.
His strength lay in his skills; his actual command ability was nothing remarkable.
After routing a small enemy force, he had his Warships stop in place for self-diagnostics.
Li Qing studied the star map for a while, then ordered his two Warships, one large and one small, to head off in one of the directions.
This entire star system was the battlefield.
Apart from the area where the main forces of both sides were clashing, small squads from both sides were fighting everywhere else in the system—it was utter chaos.
He kept well away from the area where the main forces were engaged, patrolling the fringe regions.
Whenever he spotted a large fleet, he avoided it from afar—no one could catch up with him thanks to the speed of his top-spec Destroyer.
If the risk seemed too great, he would quit while he was ahead.
If the risk seemed manageable, he would pursue them to the bitter end.
Before he knew it, he had slowly accumulated over 2 points just from destroying Escort Ships.
In theory, he could grind his way to one hundred points.
But in practice, that wasn’t really possible, because he had already spent several hours, and the Instance only lasted 24 hours in total.
There was no way he could slowly grind his way to one hundred points this way.
Li Qing wasn’t in a hurry anyway.
This first trip into the Instance was mainly to test his ships; as for points, he would take whatever came.
Worth mentioning was that destroying enemy ships also dropped some things—small amounts of wreckage and the like.
It wasn’t worth much; compared to the consumption of weapons and ammunition, it was a total loss.
For starters, each shell for the L-slot Main Gun, the Advanced Kinetic Railgun, cost 20,000 Star Credits, and each shell for the Generation 5 Electromagnetic Cannon in the M medium slot cost 3,000 Star Credits.
Since entering the battlefield, ammunition alone had already cost over 700,000 Star Credits.
At this rate of consumption, ammunition alone would cost two to three million in a single day.
“Bang!”
The Warship shook slightly.
Sitting in the command room, Li Qing watched as a transparent, honeycomb-like shield materialized in the void ahead of the Bridge, blocking a dazzling white light, a tangible ripple spreading out across the transparent shield.
It was another fierce engagement—this time against a force of three Destroyers and fifteen Escort Ships, larger than any group he had encountered before.
But he wasn’t particularly worried.
Instead, he frowned as he stared at the chaotic red and green dots marked on the battle zone map before him, lost in thought.
His exceptionally high innate Perception allowed him to keenly sense that something was off about this map.
“Could I have stumbled into a Secondary Major Battlefield?”
The main battlefield of both sides wasn’t here, but beyond the main battlefield there were several secondary battlefields where large numbers of Mainline Battleships had gathered—equally dangerous.
Although he had only encountered three Destroyers, he had spotted several small fleets led by Cruisers in the vicinity.
At that moment, the radar display showed a small fleet marked with red dots approaching his position.
He gave the order decisively:
“Prepare to retreat. Head toward three o’clock.”
Over there, only a few scattered red and green dots were tangled together, indicating that friendly and enemy warships were engaged in combat there, though on a small scale.
The moment he retreated, the three Destroyers immediately accelerated to give chase, but the difference in speed between the two sides was too great, and the distance quickly widened.
Arriving at the target location, he saw a friendly Cruiser being besieged by an enemy Cruiser and two Destroyers.
A large amount of warship debris floated in the void—judging by the scale, most of it was from Escort Ships.
Clearly, two small fleets had met and fought a brutal battle, and in the end, the Imperial Expeditionary Force side had lost.
The moment he entered the battlefield, he received a communication.
Opening it revealed a middle-aged officer in an Imperial military uniform with the rank of Major on his shoulders, who saluted him and said with delight:
“Commander, thank you for the rescue.”
Li Qing returned the salute:
“No need for thanks, Major. I will take command of the two Destroyers.”
“Thank you very much!”
Closing the communication, the Destroyers quickly approached the battlefield.
The enemy immediately dispatched a Destroyer to intercept.
Without needing his order, the warship began to turn broadside, its main gun muzzle slightly warping as it charged.
“Boom!”
A conspicuous orbital streak pierced through the void, slamming hard into the target warship.
The terrifying impact tore apart a large swath of its Composite Armor on the spot, exposing the alloy structure of its hull.
This Destroyer was already covered in scars—its Energy Shield had long been breached, and its surface armor was covered in kinetic impact marks and fusion holes from energy weapons.
Four L-slot Main Gun blasts came down, and its armor was torn apart on the spot.
Limited by their technological level—this civilization’s technology sat somewhere between the third and fourth generations—although their Destroyer Modules included the Great Gun Module, the Gunboat, and the Interception Module, their Great Gun Module could only be equipped with L-slot large weapons, not L-slot Main Gun weapons.
So the vast majority of the Destroyers he encountered used M medium slots, with only a rare few L large slot weapons—he had yet to encounter an L-slot Main Gun.
Picking off easy kills was quite satisfying.
In just two volleys, he sank this enemy ship whose shields had already broken.
This Cruiser was also covered in scars, its shields long since shattered, leaving only its riddled Composite Armor and hull.
Of course, one picks the softest persimmons first—and a Cruiser was worth 2 points, so sinking one was equivalent to sinking four Destroyers.
The L-slots on this Cruiser were mostly equipped with main guns.
The standard Cruiser model had as many as 8 L-slots and 6 G-slot Missiles, and missiles had even greater range than L-slot Main Guns.
Thanks to the range bonus from his Psionic skills, the enemy’s main guns couldn’t reach him, but the missiles could.
Just as he finished one round of gunfire, he saw six Deep Space Fusion Nuclear Missiles streaking toward him, trailing long flames.
“Escort Ships, take position!”
The Escort Ships, which had been missing in action and just along for the ride, finally came into use at this moment.
They quickly flew in front of the Destroyers and turned broadside.
Two Guardian Point Defense Systems opened fire simultaneously, their ultra-fast rate of fire of 13,000 rounds per minute forming two barrages of countless bullet streaks that swept toward the incoming missiles.
Fifth-generation Guardian Point Defense Systems intercepting third-generation Deep Space Fusion Nuclear Missiles—the generational advantage in weapons meant the interception hit rate was extremely high.
Countless streaks of barrage fire swept past, and the incoming fusion nuclear missiles were struck and destroyed one after another, erupting into huge balls of flame in the void near the warships.
“Nice!”
Li Qing breathed a sigh of relief—he had actually been afraid he might not win just now.
A cruiser’s real combat power was simply far stronger than a destroyer’s.
A standard Gale-class Destroyer had a base hull, armor, and shields of only 8,000, while a standard Ranger-class Cruiser’s base hull, armor, and shields reached as high as 60,000.
Not to mention that a cruiser’s weapon slots and Universal Slots were both more numerous and higher-tier than a destroyer’s—even a fully-equipped Elite Hurricane-class Destroyer was no match for a standard Ranger-class Cruiser.
He had also taken into account that the Psionic skill increased range by 20%.
Without that skill, even two identical fully-equipped destroyers couldn’t beat a single standard, unmodified cruiser—that was a gap in raw power.
The L-slot Main Gun kept firing, intercepting the incoming missiles one by one, and since the destroyer was faster than the cruiser, it soon entered the kiting state he excelled at.
On the other side, that Imperial Navy cruiser didn’t need to face a cruiser of its own tier—even in its crippled state, suppressing a Generation 3 destroyer was effortless.
The four L-slot Advanced Kinetic Railguns fired a full eleven consecutive volleys, and the destroyer circled the cruiser at high speed, bombarding it for over half an hour before finally grinding it down.
This high-mobility tactic minimized the enemy’s rate of attack—since he was constantly moving, their gun barrels had to keep adjusting their angles, which not only wasted time but also drastically reduced accuracy.
When the target was sunk and left paralyzed in the starry void, Li Qing let out a long breath, having gained a new appreciation for cruiser combat power.
“So strong!”
He had to admit—raising a Warship’s class by one tier really did multiply its combat power several times over.
And this was only a Generation 3 standard cruiser.
If it had been a fully-equipped Generation 5 cruiser, he definitely couldn’t have won.
Let alone a Battleship—an X-slot Super-large Main Gun had a range of 5,000+, triple that of an L-slot Main Gun.
No matter how he kited, his fate would be death in two shots.
“Huh? There’s loot too.”
There was a ball of light on the warship wreckage.
An Escort Ship came over and salvaged it with a mechanical arm—it was a Generation 3 Laser Cannon (Medium) Blueprint, worth 500,000 on the market.
More importantly, this blueprint could be used ten times, making it worth five million.
“Not bad.”
All the ammunition expended since entering the Instance had been earned back in one go.
That was how the Sea of Stars worked—in most cases, Wild Mobs only dropped worthless wreckage, but whenever something did drop, it was usually quite valuable.
With the battle over, the cruiser belonging to the Imperial Expeditionary Force bid him farewell and departed, heading back to the rear for repairs.
If they had been outside, he could have used the encounter to build a connection, but inside an Instance, connections were useless.
Any relationship formed left the Instance was meaningless, and with only 24 hours, there wasn’t much that could be done anyway.
Still, before leaving, that commander told him that not far away, an Imperial Regiment-level Fleet was battling a Large Xeno Fleet—if he wanted more military merit, he could go try his luck there.
A Regiment-level Fleet was subordinate to a Brigade-level Fleet, sitting between the large fleets.
The United Empire of Humanity’s fleet organization, from top to bottom, was: Legion-level Fleet, Division-level Fleet, Brigade-level Fleet, Large Detachment Fleet, Medium Detachment Fleet, and Small Detachment Fleet.
Normally, there is no such formation as a Wing-level Detachment Fleet; it is generally a temporary organization formed by combining several Large Detachment Fleets to carry out certain military missions, and it is disbanded again after the war.
This detachment fleet possessed 120 Battleships, over 500 Cruisers, over 1,600 Destroyers, and more than 6,000 Escort Ships, composed of three Large Detachment Fleets.
Their opponents, even after a long and grueling battle, still had over 170 Battleships, more than 700 Cruisers, over 2,000 Destroyers, and more than 5,000 Escort Ships remaining—a force even larger than the Empire’s side.
However, their disadvantage in weapons configuration meant that even with a two-to-one advantage from the start, they had gained no edge whatsoever.
And by now, they no longer held that two-to-one superiority; they were barely maintaining a stalemate, though it was clearly evident that if the fighting continued to the end, the victor would inevitably be the Empire.
It was precisely because Li Qing saw this that, after a brief moment of consideration, he decided to go over and take a look, planning to use the little time remaining to slack off a bit and see if he could take out some Destroyers or damaged Cruisers, hoping to scrape together twenty or thirty points within 24 hours to exchange for a few Escort Ship Blueprints.