Global Crossing: Empire of Stars

There were too few samples for him to find an answer, but that didn't stop him from using his free time to run through some "dungeons." These space-time bubbles were the perfect training grounds for the Expeditionary Fleet to conduct live-fire drills when it had nothing else to do.

He hadn't chosen the most basic pirates or rebel fleets. Ordinary NPC Fleets like those offered little training for the battle-hardened Imperial Fleet. He preferred to pick more unusual enemies, such as the strange Mechanical Civilization he'd spotted in one of the space-time bubbles.

Mechanical Civilizations had a variety of origins. Broadly speaking, they fell into two categories: natural evolution and technological runaway. The former were represented by Silicon-based lifeforms. After enduring the passage of time, these creatures of stone or steel mastered technology through evolution and advanced toward the stars, either by choice or by circumstance,

becoming a Mechanical Civilization.

The latter arose when a native civilization brought disaster upon itself. Its technology spiraled out of control, and its artificial intelligence went rogue. The lucky ones were demoted from masters of their civilization to pampered, captive layabouts; the unlucky were wiped out by the rogue intelligence.

Regardless of their origin, most Mechanical Civilizations relied on overwhelming numbers. They advanced along a mechanical evolutionary path, from mechanical soldiers to Mechanical Generals and even Mechanical Monarchs. With a wave of their hands, countless autonomous machines would charge forward and drown their enemies in a sea of machines.

But there were exceptions, like the Transformers, who excelled through individual strength and focused on personal evolution. This type was relatively rare, but he'd found one.

What appeared in view were clusters of alloy spheres, each resembling a Battle Star, floating through space. Lin Zhichen looked closely and discovered that most of these alloy structures,