Chapter 1592: Reconnaissance

When Hao Ren and Vivian arrived back to the Naqdal base, the minions of the Mad Lord had gone.

A small team of the minions tried to cross the security perimeter of Naqdal but was repelled by the drones. After a brief fight, the drones destroyed all scouts of the Mad Lord within the range of fire while other festered monsters roaming further afield retreated. The drones, which were not equipped with gravitational trap, did not manage to capture the enemy scouts. The festered monsters got away.

But it was not a big deal because the Naqdal security perimeter covered a wide area. Those monsters were not close enough to pose a threat or know the situation of the base. They did not even see the scale of the base cluster. The drones had intercepted the enemy scouts at half a light year away from the base.

But it served as a warning to Hao Ren. Just as he had predicted before, the festered monsters had not only locked on the position of Naqdal Continent but also knew the presence of the ‘outsiders.’ They had not given up this place.

It seemed that the crystals on Naqdal Continent were of great appeal to the monsters.

The modification of the control center of Naqdal was completed. Since the navigation crystal was the core of the underground part of the control center, and Hao Ren had not mastered the way to control it, the subterranean structure was left untouched, and the temple on the surface had become the new control center.

The drone cluster had finished installing all the propulsion units on the continent. The shield generators and weapon platforms were also online. Other than the engine, every system came in two sets. One was the original control system that the guardian giants built, while another was the new system that the drones had built. Both systems were connected to the underground control center and the temple on the surface. At present, Hao Ren was controlling the fortified continent through the temple.

It was as if snapping on a body control device on a dead body. It was an indirect control but was enough to let the space fortress function as it should be.

Hao Ren and Vivian had returned and walked into the temple surrounded by the sprites. This building still looked as magnificent as before. But there was the addition of many Xi Ling-style equipment and a bunch of autonomous robots flying around inside. In the polygonal chamber, where the Temporary Command was, Hao Ren went straight before a dark metal wall. “How is the situation?”

As Hao Ren’s voice trailed off, the metal wall rippled as if liquid, and then an ever-changing face surfaced. “Six hours ago, the patrol drones discovered an abnormal spatial distortion near the security perimeter and detected that the minions of the Mad Lord had appeared nearby. Three minutes later, the drones exchanged fire with the intruders, which then split into two with one group still trying to cross the line while another group began to move in the opposite direction.”

The drone cluster consciousness said as the hologram showed visual footage of what happened during the exchange of fire.

“Fifteen minutes later, the enemy flying in the opposite direction suddenly retreated, and the drones did not manage to intercept them. Twenty-six minutes later, the drones wiped out all intruding enemy units. We have salvaged part of the wreckage, but the initial examination suggests that they are of no value.”

“Were they acting in an organized way?” Hao Ren asked after looking at the footage.

“They showed a high degree of discipline and swift reactions. Our drones outnumbered and defeated them quickly, but they had a considerable degree of battlefield command capability.”

“Just as we expected. The group that attacked Naqdal earlier was disorganized, but this time, some commander was behind this.” Hao Ren glanced at Vivian. “Perhaps, we will not see those F2A cowards anymore; the enemy is taking us seriously this time.”

Vivian seemed to in thought. After a while, she looked up at the peristaltic metal wall in front of her. “Can you roughly analyze the difference in combat style between these intruders and the ones in the previous battle?”

The drone cluster consciousness quickly replied, “The action of the intruders this time was more conservative, and they were operating in smaller groups of mutated monsters as their main force. There is a large deviation from the previously collected enemy tactical data.”

Vivian nodded. “This means the enemy has more than one commander.”

“Apparently, they were testing us,” said Hao Ren. “They are not sure who this third force that has come out of nowhere is. The defeat of their army by our drones in the previous battle has put them under pressure. So, they did not come to attack us recklessly this time. Instead, they sent a small group of scouts.”

“It seems that the decision to build the base and expand our forces is right,” The MDT came up and said. “They did not manage to spy how big the Naqdal base was. But they should have realized it by now that the drone cluster is expanding at a rate much faster than previously. They would be more cautious in formulating an offensive strategy.”

“But it will also give them a sense of urgency,” Hao Ren said. “Their commanders must be assembling their troops and planning to eliminate the third force like us. The drone forces are expanding rapidly; the enemy knows it and will not sit by and watch.”

The next wave of attack was imminent, and it was going to be a major one.

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Hao Ren did not sit by and waiting for it to happen; he has taken some actions now.

At the deepest part of the Naqdal base, there was a newly completed hyperspace catapult mechanism next to the drone fortress. Structurally, it was akin to a shrunk-version of the warp-jump accelerator. But it had added a long, silver-white track that seemed to be continually changing between reality and illusion at the end of the string of rings. Now, this new facility had fired up with bright energy sparks bursting between the rings and the guide rail. A weird-looking drone was slowly guided to the starting end of the accelerator by traction beams.

It was, indeed, a different type of accelerator. But unlike the conventional accelerator, this one had an enhanced hidden module. It could not only erase the coordinates of the accelerated object in the real world but also allowed the object to remain ‘erased’ for an hour after arriving at its destination. In this hidden state, the catapulted object would lose all the corresponding information in the real world, even all traces in the causality and timeline as if it had never existed and would never appear in future. The object would not be observable using observation method based on the laws of the universe.

The weird-looking drone was the ‘erased’ covert-operation unit. It was bigger than the conventional drone. At tens of meters long, it was equipped with various sensors. The rear section that looked like the abdomen of an insect was a globular machinery compartment. These devices, made after Hao Ren obtained an Authorization Upgrade Protocol through the Inspector Data Link, allowed the covert-operation drone to have a unidirectional communicate with the real world while it was still in the ‘erased’ state. In other words, it could observe the outside world, but the outside world would not detect its existence.

The primary coil of the accelerator lit up. The surging light curtain in the coil became a zero-thickness film. The scouting drone passed through the film and began to fade.

“The coordinates have been erased. Erasure of information in progress… Information on the target has been erased. Source data is temporarily stored in the virtual point memory.”

Hao Ren stood in the observation station in space and watched as the ripples in the front end of the accelerator gradually subsided. He had no idea what he had just launched nor how the thing looked and what it could do, but according to the memo, he knew that he would receive some information from the distant and mysterious battlefield soon.

“The probe will send back the signal,” the MDT said as it turned on the holographic display. “The footage could be fuzzy at first.”

After a while, Hao Ren saw some shadows appearing in the holographic footage.

It was the visual distortion of starlight passing through the curtains of the real world. It was blurry at first, and things seemed to be overlapping. But soon, the footage became clear.

The first thing he saw was a rock. The large rock floated in space and quickly approached the camera, but the expected collision did not happen. The camera seemed to not exist in the real world as the camera lens, and the rock went through each other. The footage blacked out for a while before it appeared again.

A soft glowing galaxy lay in the distant background. In the foreground, countless space debris was floating around. In the upper left corner of the footage, a faint halo that seemed to be part of some interstellar cloud appeared, and a few things that looked like artificial objects glimmered softly at the end of this gas cloud.

The sprites could not leave Naqdal too far. But the facility in which Hao Ren was now was located in the synchronous orbit near Naqdal. So, Hao Ren had invited the three sprites, who were the temporary consultants, to the facility. Right now, the long-haired sprites, who floated beside Hao Ren’s head, was staring intently at the holographic image and nodding. “These should be the debris of Naqdal!”

The other two sprites followed suit. “Some of the debris belongs to Agodal!”

“Because Agodal was damaged slightly!”

“But I cannot see Agodal and Amantir from the footage.”

“It is so far away after all.”

“There seem to be no enemies here.” Vivian looked at the footage. The camera panned around to capture the entire scenes in its surroundings. “Did the festered monsters abandon the area after destroying Naqdal?”

“They might not have the habit of cleaning up the battlefield or salvaging materials.” Hao Ren nodded. “What would those artificial objects at the edge of the interstellar cloud be?”

The sprites came up. “Let me take a look! Let me take a look!”

“They look like Amantir’s sentry posts.”

“Don’t get too close, or they will spot you!”

Hao Ren nodded. “MDT, please take note. We have to avoid those things when we get there.”