The enemy's numbers were surging, while our first line of defense had already become a mere shell.
No one had expected the Fallen Apostles to push their mothership formations into the Prime Material Plane so quickly. With their vanguard having suffered saturated bombardment, sending motherships—which could barely evade any artillery fire—onto the battlefield was an extremely dangerous move. Yet the facts proved they had the capital to take that risk: the number of enemies appearing before the Empire Army far exceeded expectations. The Combined Shield formed by the Fallen Apostles' mothership formations blocked the Legion Cannon positions' follow-up attacks for a short time. After a brief charge-up, Star River Main Gun fire permeated with Abyssal Aura swept through the Asteroid Belt like a flood. The entire Asteroid Belt was instantly smashed to pieces, and the positions formed by the Legion Cannons were split into over a hundred fragments. Nearly two-thirds of the cannons stopped responding in that first wave of attacks, while the rest were disrupted by intense psionic energy and could no longer be controlled, forced to rely on the Legion Cannons' own onboard AI to fight independently.
Without the coordination of the information network, Legion Cannons—emplacement artillery that could only display their advantages as a collective—quickly fell apart, and at that point, the Empire Army fleet had no choice but to move up ahead of schedule.
After only a few minutes of exchange, the entire Asteroid Belt had been swept clean. Every natural celestial body floating in space had been turned into fundamental particles. As far as the eye could see, warship wreckage was beginning to pile up: there were the Legion Cannon positions that had just been destroyed, remnants of the Fallen Apostles' vanguard fleet, and warships of the Empire Defense Force.
"Your Majesty! We can't suppress