War-Torn Starry Sky

A gigantic spatial rift slowly opened in the starry sky, like a hollow eye stretching across the sky above Shouji. Distant starlight and the illusions at the edge of the Star Gate swayed on the other side of this "eye"—then the massive Unified Fleet lit its engines. Six special-operations bombers were the first to cross the Star Gate passage, followed by shield ships equipped with wide-area shield projectors and several large arsenal ships. The flagship, the Mass Effect, followed closely behind the remaining warships, accelerating through the enormous passage.

Deep in the distant Dark Current star region, at the border of the Hermetic Society's territory, an energy burst exceeding the system's threshold swept across the entire Star Gate in an instant!

Radiance surged at the center of the ring-shaped megastructure. Red light churned within the giant ring like blood, while a terrifying rift tore through the entire stretch of spacetime inside the Main Ring. The Star Gate's normally operating transmission process was forcibly hijacked and interrupted. The immense energy accumulated inside the Main Ring instantly ran wild, transforming into countless red arcs of lightning spanning over a thousand kilometers as they burst outward!

The dim corona of the brown dwarf illuminated the rapidly expanding red flashes. During the first few seconds, the Star Gate's defenders had no time to react at all—but those initial seconds were also their final chance to close the gate. After a brief release of energy and a tear in space, the first wave of attackers leaped out of the sea formed by the red thunderbolts.

Like a giant beast rising from a sea of blood, the Wraith-class special-operations bombers entered the battlefield. Before the nearest Hermetic Society warships could react, hundreds of graviton bombs had already been launched into space. These heavy bombs, equipped with