We were all delighted by the generous gift Father God and Huron King had brought back, even Sandora, who was slowly orbiting overhead, sent congratulations. The only thing worth complaining about was that the gift was a little too fragmented. Ding Dang above, I had no idea what Hela had done, but she had turned that Monarch-class fortress into 1.57 million pieces—and that did not even include all the debris scattered everywhere. Reassembling the fortress was going to be a tremendous headache.
Still, compared to the other three Monarch-class fortresses, which had been completely obliterated, at least this one had left behind ashes. That was something to celebrate.
Four Monarch-class fortresses—none of us had anticipated such a lineup at the start. I had only seen this kind of ultimate warship once before, during the battle in Kopru. Back then, Ockham had used a Monarch-class fortress to send an Abyss Gate into the Dark Sun, attempting to contaminate the still-fragile imperial capital. That plan was ultimately foiled, but we paid the price of having the Kopru Star Sector hot-started. It was also after that dangerous situation that headquarters revised the void coordinates of the capital universe, hiding Shadow Space and Earth's universe in their current safe location, indirectly influencing the later borders of the New Empire.
After that, the Fallen Apostles never deployed Monarch-class fortresses on the front lines again—until today. As if they had been saving up for a single explosive move, they sent four of these super fortresses into imperial territory at once.
The four fortresses' original target was probably not xf-35-a. After all, xf-35-a was only a decoy, and the enemy had even used mirror images for the rear guard stationed there. There was no reason to send four Monarch-class fortresses to such a place. Sandora speculated that