Rebirth of the Super Battleship

Chapter 798: Mosquitoes and Net

Xiao Yu had already made up his mind to destroy the Neutron War Star today, then march on the Sweepers Civilization’s main base and eradicate their civilization. Doing this did not actually bring him any substantial benefit, but Xiao Yu was still willing to do it.

He had not forgotten the Specter companion who had died under the Sweepers Civilization and the Neutron War Star. It had been the only comrade he had been able to entrust with his entire heart and mind, and it had also been bound to him by ties deeper than blood. This was a wound that would never heal in Xiao Yu’s heart.

“Besides, after scheming against me for so long, plotting so painstakingly to kill me, how could I possibly let you off so easily… The Microscopic Civilization is not known for its combat prowess to begin with. I may not yet be a true Level 7 Civilization, but I have already mastered part of Level 7 space technology. Let us see whether you can rescue the Neutron War Star within two hours.” Xiao Yu sneered inwardly.

After receiving Xiao Yu’s reply, the Microscopic Civilization fell silent. The basketball sized light cluster formed by them floated up and down in space, as if bobbing on the surface of water. At this time, all of Xiao Yu’s warships had locked their targeting systems onto it. But Xiao Yu did not launch the first strike.

The Microscopic Civilization did not respond again. Time slipped away bit by bit in this silence.

All of a sudden, the light cluster scattered like a startled swarm of fireflies, instantly vanishing into the darkness of space. At that moment, Xiao Yu sensed a violent fluctuation coming from the outer shield of the space laboratory.

To guard against accidents, the space laboratory had been constructed with the sturdiest design from the very beginning. Its outer shield had been built entirely according to the standards of the Solar. In terms of pure defensive capability, the space laboratory was in no way inferior to the Solar. It was a shield system that combined at least more than fifty layers of different shielding technologies.

The outer shield of the space laboratory suddenly began to fluctuate violently. One after another, data sensors reported streams of figures to Xiao Yu. He immediately understood that the Microscopic Civilization was trying to break through his space shield.

The Microscopic Civilization’s attack was unlike any form of attack Xiao Yu had ever experienced before. If his defenses were likened to a large net, then all the attacks Xiao Yu had previously experienced in war or from sudden natural phenomena had been from relatively large creatures. Naturally, large creatures would be stopped by the net. The contest between attacker and net was determined mainly by how strong the attacker’s force was and how tough the net was. The Microscopic Civilization, however, was different.

The Microscopic Civilization was like the wind, like tiny mosquitoes. They did not need to tear the net apart. They only had to slip through the gaps between the strands. This was a completely new form of attack.Xiao Yu’s mind drew taut. He knew that this defensive battle would be a tremendous challenge for him.

Indeed, once the Microscopic Civilization revealed its method of attack, Xiao Yu had already found a way to respond to it. When the mosquitoes tried to pass through the gaps in the net, Xiao Yu could move the net, turning what had been a gap into a strand of the net, thereby blocking the mosquitoes’ path.

There were many ‘mosquitoes’. The instant the Microscopic Civilization launched its attack, Xiao Yu calculated their numbers. The Microscopic Civilization’s total number of individual units was roughly three hundred billion. Xiao Yu needed to know, in real time, the position and movement of each one of these three hundred billion microscopic ships. He then had to rapidly compute and constantly adjust the parameters of his space shield to prevent them from entering the interior of the space laboratory.

Fortunately, Xiao Yu’s computational power was formidable. His brain took in this mighty torrent of data in its entirety.

These data could not be handled by artificial intelligence. The Microscopic Civilization had its own consciousness, and in this game of attack and defense, it was flexible and unpredictable. Flexibility and unpredictability were precisely the greatest enemies of artificial intelligence. Only Xiao Yu himself could handle these data.

With this method of attack, only Xiao Yu could withstand the Microscopic Civilization. No other civilization at Xiao Yu’s current technological level could possibly resist their assault.

In this unseen space, a pseudo Level 7 Civilization and a veteran Level 7 Civilization had begun a unique battle. The stakes were the Neutron War Star and the life or death of the Sweepers Civilization.

Space was seething violently. Countless minute spatial vortices were forming in the dark and then vanishing just as quickly. Three hundred billion microscopic ships of the Microscopic Civilization were shuttling back and forth through the twisted space, trying to break into the space laboratory.

Just then, one of Xiao Yu’s Province-Class ships suddenly moved. Xiao Yu noticed the anomaly at once. The reason he focused on it was simple, he had not commanded that Province-Class warship to do anything. Yet it moved anyway. It not only moved, but took an action entirely beyond Xiao Yu’s expectations. The ship slowly shifted its position, and once it had adjusted to a suitable angle, it fired a space attack. The blast struck the space laboratory in an instant.

The outer space shield of the laboratory rippled once, then returned to calm. The Province-Class ship, on the other hand, suddenly exploded violently, turning into a ball of fire. A tiny point of light seemed to try to dart out from the flames, but it failed. It had barely gotten any distance before the flames caught up with it, and it vanished in an instant.

Xiao Yu knew that one or several microscopic ships had invaded that Province-Class ship, and while he was momentarily inattentive, they had seized control of it and used it to attack him.

After that Province-Class ship exploded, the Microscopic Civilization apparently realized the feasibility of this tactic. In the next moment, dense swarms of light points flew out from the shield around the space laboratory and rushed toward the warships scattered throughout space. They were like bloodsucking leeches, and once they reached the hulls they plunged in. Because the defensive capabilities of these ships were relatively poor, Xiao Yu was unable to prevent their infiltration.

The microscopic ships that left the space laboratory’s shield numbered one hundred billion, roughly one third of their total strength.

Among the ships occupied by the Microscopic Civilization, the largest were Nation-Class, and the smallest were Village-Class. The Continent-Class and planetary-class ships already possessed a certain degree of protection and were not so easy for them to infiltrate. Immediately, within these ships, a second battlefield was opened.

The microscopic ships roamed freely through the information circuits inside the warships, altering their hardware configurations and software parameters, ultimately trying to turn them into their own. Faced with their microscopic bodies, as tiny as atoms, all of the internal defense mechanisms on Xiao Yu’s ships were useless.

Xiao Yu’s vast computational power surged forth in that instant. He first raised the control authority levels on these ships, then controlled the repair robots to begin patching damaged data lines. The battle between the two sides unfolded simultaneously on both the software and hardware layers. The difference was that Xiao Yu’s defense focused mainly on the software layer, while the Microscopic Civilization’s assault focused mainly on the hardware layer.

Without software-level permissions, hardware could not be used. Without hardware as a carrier, software became water without a source.

Xiao Yu set one logical trap and barrier after another on the software side, blocking the Microscopic Civilization’s advance. The Microscopic Civilization, on the other hand, generally altered hardware directly, using brute-force methods to try to seize control of the warships. They even tried to sever the connection between Xiao Yu and these vessels. But that was very difficult. On a massive warship there were tens of millions of communication devices. As long as even one of those tens of millions of devices remained intact, Xiao Yu could use it to control the entire ship.

In the intense struggle, some ships reached the brink of being overrun. When that happened, Xiao Yu would not hesitate. He would immediately order the ship to self-destruct. Some ships did not have time to self-destruct before the Microscopic Civilization took control of their permissions. When that occurred, Xiao Yu could only direct other warships to destroy them.

After all the Sweepers Civilization’s conventional warships had been annihilated, the sound of cannon fire once again echoed across the battlefield, but now both sides in the clash were Xiao Yu’s own warships.

The most critical contest took place aboard a planetary-class warship. The Microscopic Civilization finally broke through its outer defenses and entered the interior. More than three hundred thousand microscopic ships were involved in the struggle for that vessel’s control authority. Data lines were severed one after another, while new lines that did not follow the normal rules were hastily laid. Information that originally required permission verification could now flow freely through these newly built circuits.

Xiao Yu did not wait until the planetary-class warship was completely seized. He detonated it decisively. He would rather destroy it than let it fall into the hands of the Microscopic Civilization. That was his stance.

The Solar, the Star-Class warship, also came under a certain level of attack. However, the Solar’s defense was on par with that of the space laboratory, and the Microscopic Civilization had no way to break through its defenses in a short time. The situation in the war against the Guardian Civilization, where the Microscopic Civilization had slipped into the main control room without a sound, would not be repeated aboard the Solar. After that incident, Xiao Yu had conducted special research on the Microscopic Civilization and created targeted defensive measures.

Amid this intense contest of seizure, assault, and defense, time ticked by bit by bit. An hour and a half had already passed. Only half an hour remained until the Neutron War Star would be destroyed…