On the outskirts of the Halm system, where the Blade Fleet had originally vanished.
A momentous battle had just taken place in this once-empty stretch of space. Though a day had already passed, the countless fragments of warships and crewmen's corpses still drifting through the battlefield spoke of the battle's brutality.
The corpses were especially dense throughout this region of space.
When the Luukri-Hok-class battleship collided with the Plague, more than 8,000 Gran Marines were killed on the spot, with over 20,000 more seriously wounded. In the ensuing battle, another 20,000-plus Marines died. Including the crew aboard the warships destroyed on both sides, roughly 70,000 soldiers had been killed in this battle.
Then there were the Blade Fleet's original 440,000 crewmen. After both sides took control of the ships, the bodies of those crewmen had been immediately dumped out through the ships' waste disposal bays, for fear that the corpses might still carry the Brain Plague virus.
Even the Galactic Republic soldiers had done the same, showing not the slightest regard for their fallen comrades.
As a result, more than 500,000 corpses had been densely gathered in this area... a veritable hell in space.
The Gran were practically here as laborers, and now they had also been tasked with cleaning up the battlefield. The Fourth Civilization was rather meticulous in this regard. After every battle, they cleaned up the battlefield and collected useful parts. Even if there were none, they could still haul the wreckage back, melt it down, and build new warships from it.
Unlike the wealthy Galactic Republic, which often simply blew up warship wreckage after a battle if it could not be cleared away in time. They could not even be bothered to clean it up, so long as the enemy could not make use of it.