Ch.151151. Calamity from Outer Space

The battle that unfolded afterward was both magnificent and dramatic.

Despite knowing their chances of victory were extremely low against the overwhelming prowess of that monster, the Warrior-Suits fought against the overwhelming enemy solely to buy time for civilians to evacuate.

A 4-meter high-mobility reconnaissance Warrior-Suit, its body separated into upper and lower halves, continued to resist by firing its twin gamma energy machine guns in that state, while a standard 10-meter Warrior-Suit armed with a shield and gamma energy cannon fought to the end even after suffering a data collapse attack.

The latter’s achievement was particularly remarkable because this data collapse attack, a type of psychic assault designed to counter machines, causes machine races with souls to experience soul-rending pain as if their entire body is being torn apart.

Yet the Latisinos, who cannot feel physical pain, endured and resisted until the end despite having no immunity to such agony, let alone pain itself, which they were experiencing for the first time.

Therefore, the Hive Mind, thinking it would be a shame for such determined warriors to be torn apart like mere algorithm-loaded combat androids, granted them special treatment that would surprise other monsters if they knew.

First, perceiving their intention to buy time, it played along and engaged each one in direct combat, blade to blade, and even allowed the civilian evacuation ships they were protecting to escape, despite being able to shoot them down.

Of course, even with this special treatment, they couldn’t prevent their downfall.

Shortly after the knight summoned by the Hive Mind appeared on the front lines, the Latisino Republic collapsed with all its territories falling, but even then, the Hive Mind showed special mercy by not blocking the escape ships.

One could say it created a foundation for the Latisinos to someday rebuild their power.

Anyway, with the fall of the Latisino Republic, the minor powers in the alien realm were essentially facing nothing short of annihilation.

But for some reason, after the destruction of the Latisino Empire, Doomsday advanced a bit further before suddenly using spatial jump to disappear into the realm of monsters, thus ending the 8th invasion itself.

Of course, the aftermath was immeasurably massive.

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First, naturally, the Galactic Federation, having failed to achieve its goal of stopping the monsters in this invasion, had become virtually no different from the League of Nations created after World War I.

Most civilizations, except for a few pro-human alien species, concluded that the human-led Federation could not stop the monsters, and banded together to create a new power called the “Freedom Union” (FU).

While the existing United Galaxy (UG) was a hegemonic organization centered around the Human Federation, the Freedom Union was intended to form a multinational alliance similar to the European Union.

To remain in the Freedom Union and receive its protection, member states had to fulfill their obligations by paying dues or having their soldiers serve in the FU military, but in return, the Union would do everything in its power to protect its members no matter what happened.

Although it might inevitably be less streamlined than the Galactic Federation with its explicitly designated leader, the Freedom Union certainly offered more security guarantees to its member states.

In a situation where monsters could directly attack the FU at any time, the system where the Freedom Union forces would deploy regardless of circumstances as long as a state was a member actually proved its effectiveness admirably.

Taking over the systems previously built by the Galactic Federation, they laid warp-ways throughout the entire FU territory, nominally stopping conflicts between themselves and uniting as a single power.

Thus, the galaxy was divided into three major powers:

The most powerful but uncompromising Monster-Hive Mind, the Human Federation as the only single power capable (or believed to be capable) of full-scale war against the monsters, and finally the Freedom Union, an alliance of the remaining minor powers.

After the power structure had been firmly established according to someone’s meticulous behind-the-scenes manipulations, the briefly peaceful cosmic situation began to shake due to a sudden variable.

This variable originated from a border outpost stationed at the Human Federation’s outer space border.

On the outer space border, which had been left unattended since current technology couldn’t reach other galaxies, there existed space fortresses that moved along massive orbits monitoring the surroundings, in case monsters might invade toward outer space.

These fortresses, which like space stations had only position-maintaining propulsion systems but possessed greater firepower and defense than ships of the same class, had actually been neglected for hundreds of years with barely minimal maintenance.

Well, they had never properly fulfilled their role since their installation, and with the increasing power of newly developed fixed-target attack weapons, space fortresses were continuously becoming obsolete.

Additionally, these space fortresses housed a kind of indigenous population that had lived there for generations over hundreds of years, essentially functioning as artificial space constructs.

Anyway, among these fortresses on the outskirts, which were little more than places of exile for officers pushed away from promotion tracks, there existed one ordinary outer space surveillance fortress called XA-27363.

This fortress, roughly the size of a cruiser-class (10KM) ship, was that day as always filled with garrison soldiers from the fortress natives and those drafted from the planetary defense forces, happily enjoying recreation together.

Bang! Bang!

Is that you?!!

And that recreation was a vintage home FPS game brought by a garrison soldier from outside.

Despite the hologram technology that lacked tangibility and the crude game console too old to simulate taste, it was a blessing in a place with nothing else to do.

Recently, feeling the monotony of repetitive maps, they had even started teaching themselves programming to create mods, but people can’t just work all the time.

So they were enthusiastically playing despite being on duty in the control tower equipped with the best observation equipment, which was… the most decisive reason why this incident wasn’t contained in its early stages.

KWAAAANG───!!!!!

From far away in the direction of outer space, a blue energy mass that traveled from an undetectable distance in just 0.5 seconds very easily shattered the fortress’s shield, struck its core, and instantly vaporized the fortress.

This happened simultaneously throughout the area in the same manner, with most of the outer fortresses exploding without even being able to react to the sudden surprise attack.

And shortly after.

From beyond, what could be considered the cause of this incident gradually revealed itself───

Surprisingly, it was a fleet of tens of thousands of monster ships that clearly looked somewhat different from typical monster vessels.

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Typical monster ships definitely have an appearance that gives the impression of living organisms.

They have mouths with sharp mythril teeth covered by carapace mandibles, carapace horns or milky tentacles growing on their surface, and their exterior looks worn, giving the impression of old tree bark.

But the monsters included in this fleet were clearly different in appearance, starting with their overall streamlined, clean design.

With a generally neat design and a well-matched color scheme of white, blue, and gold, they looked more like alien race ships with a strong sci-fi feel.

However, if one were to compare the two types of monster ships side by side, anyone could see that they resembled each other, and the similar arrangement of their gun ports would easily lead to the conclusion that they shared the same origin.

And if there was a decisive difference between these ships and others, it would be the design differences by size.

While similar, the typical monster ships clearly had differences in the detailed positioning of gun barrels by class and individual variations, whereas these monster ships were identical in appearance as if copied, differing only in size.

Anyway, after these strange-looking monster ships destroyed humanity’s outer fortresses, by the time the Human Imperial Command grasped the situation───

They had already entered human territory through some unknown method and, like the existing monsters, begun invading planetary systems.