The holographic comm ended.
Zhao Chen sat in his own captain's chair, looking at the distant interstellar battlefield. That was already no longer a thing he need trouble himself over. He took a look at the progress of all his tasks now.
Mission: The hive-race plague of the North Wind Star Region
Task one: Destroy thirty T3 Hive Motherships (30/30).
Task two: Annihilate a total of one billion hive-race units (250 million / 1 billion).
Task three: Rescue the common people whose lives are threatened by the hive-race plague; upon reaching a certain order of magnitude, a corresponding reward may be claimed (5 million, 10 million, 15 million, 20 million, 25 million, 30 million people…). Number rescued so far: 2 billion. 200,000 System points may be obtained.
Task four: Please choose one of the three designated branch-mission options.
The T3-Hive-Mothership task — in the battle just now, Zhao Chen's Owl Dragon Fleet had, in passing, destroyed several of them, and it was completed as a matter of course. Task two wasn't yet complete for the moment, but afterward Zhao Chen need only seek out a few planets seized by the hive-race, and it could generally be completed. Task three was no matter — he'd farm the System points at his leisure. As for task four:
Branch mission one: The Defense of Planet SP118 battle.
Branch mission two: The Morton System hive-race battle (in progress).
Branch mission three: The Sapphire System Third Planet Rescue Battle (completed).
The Morton System hive-race battle could, in fact, be counted as already a success; only, as of now it was still "in progress" — by all estimates it would count as complete once those two T4 Hive Motherships and all the T3 Hive Motherships were destroyed. What Zhao Chen could do now was, likewise, only wait.
"There's no telling just how much mission reward one gets when a large-scale System mission like this is completed." There was some anticipation in Zhao Chen's heart.
……
Over the next few days, the Empire-military fleets, with a round of coordination, quite smoothly destroyed the two T4 Hive Motherships — though they too paid the loss of several thousand interstellar warships. But set against the annihilation of two T4 Hive Motherships and a great mass of swarm, in their eyes this much loss counted for nothing at all. The Empire-military fleets began, one after another, to recover those planets seized and controlled by the hive-race fleets. Because most of these planets had already fully fallen four or five days ago, the common people on them basically had no possibility of survival left.
Zhao Chen's Owl Dragon Fleet took the initiative to accept the task of clearing the internal hive-race units of a few planets.
In the high sky over one planet, several T1 Hive Motherships floated. But before long, these T1 Hive Motherships, as though sensing danger, began to rise rapidly — only to be struck, soon enough, by beam after beam of laser fire descending from the heavens, and to explode. Reduced to fireballs, they plunged toward the ground.
T3 Phoenix-class Heavy Carrier Starship · bridge.
"Scan this planet's life signals — is there still any sign of survivors?" Zhao Chen ordered.
"Yes." Lilith began using the ship's life-radar to scan the planet below. After some dozens of minutes of scanning, the conclusion came: not a single sign of life had been scanned, save for bugs. Which was to say, on this planet the possibility of there still being survivors was under 0.01%.
"This is the speed at which a bug-swarm devours a planet; this planet originally had close to 1 billion residents on it. In a bare span of under a week, it's fallen to become a bug-sea."
Zhao Chen looked down upon this planet from on high; this planet was already riddled with wounds, one able to see everywhere the enormous, tower-like bug-nests, and the dense, teeming swarm. To look upon it alone was enough to chill one to the bone with dread.
"For any interstellar species whatsoever, the interstellar hive-race and the Mechanical Race are existences of the greatest threat — because to the local species, they're a blow of an utterly annihilating kind," Lilith said gravely.
Zhao Chen pondered a moment, then said, "As planned — conduct an orbital bombardment on this planet."
"Yes." Lilith began relaying the Commander's order.
One Owl Dragon Fleet warship after another began to encircle this planet's outer reaches. The T3 Blizzards, the T3 Phantom Assassins, the T3 Phoenix. And the T2 Snow Mastiffs, T2 Black Rhinos, T2 Lion Kings. The main guns, secondary guns, and interstellar missiles aboard over 100 interstellar warships all trained upon this planet's surface. At a single order from Zhao Chen, these warships began an orbital bombardment upon this planet's surface. Beam after beam of light, shell after shell, fell from the sky.
A T3 Thunder-Beast positioned on the ground raised its head, looking at the sky already gone red; in its eyes were mirrored the "columns of light," one after another, descending from the heavens.
Boom, boom, boom.
Deafening explosions came sweeping in; the whirlwinds the explosions produced submerged the hive-race upon this land. Just as, a few days before, they had invaded this planet and slaughtered this planet's residents. Today, they had become the objects of the slaughter. Fire everywhere; the planet's original buildings, too, collapsed under this sustained attack.
Out in outer space, Zhao Chen looked down upon this planet; what he saw at this moment was a planet in the midst of "burning." Before his eyes, the number of hive-race units annihilated in the System-task column was climbing at an astonishing speed. Perhaps because it had all along been interstellar warfare before, Zhao Chen had never had much of a concept of his own power. But now, watching a planet fall, at a single order of his, straight into a sea of fire, he came at last to realize just how terrifying the war machine he held in hand at this moment was. He could, with ease, destroy all life on a planet!
This round of bombardment lasted a full half hour. This planet's very ground was blasted down and sank dozens of meters; indeed, at several spots the continents collapsed, forming great canyons never seen before. Everywhere were natural disasters of every kind. Volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and the rest. Under this half hour of attack, over 99% of the hive-race on this planet were cleaned away; as for the remaining bugs, those were left to whoever would take over and rebuild this planet in the future to carry out a deeper cleaning.
Having cleared several planets one after another, Zhao Chen's task was, at last, completed.
(1 billion / 1 billion)
Zhao Chen didn't know when this main mission would settle up; taking advantage of this stretch of time, Zhao Chen began leading the Owl Dragon Fleet to hurry to the systems in need, evacuating those residents of planets that needed it. All for the sake of farming task three's System points. But because the hive-race crisis had been brought under control, farming this task now was not so easy as at the outset; the efficiency had slowed a good deal.
Galactic Star Calendar, year 3032, late February.
The North Wind Star Region's hive-race disaster had gone on for the better part of a month now; and under the North Wind Governor's swift response, it had at last, from the original full-region war-mobilization state, been lowered to a full-region tier-3 combat-readiness state.
And at the same time, an alert tone came from Zhao Chen's System task.
Mission: The hive-race plague of the North Wind Star Region (settling)
Please claim the relevant mission rewards.