"Two mechanical fleets?"
Chen Yu opened the Star Map System and focused his gaze in the direction of the Andromeda Nebula.
The Andromeda Nebula was the largest celestial structure in the Local Group besides the Milky Way. It was a vast spiral, about 2.5 million light-years from the Milky Way, with a diameter of roughly 200,000 light-years.
The Local Group contained around fifty galaxies in total, with the Andromeda Nebula and the Milky Way as its two main centers. It was divided into two subgroups: the Andromeda Galaxy Subgroup and the Milky Way Subgroup.
Between the two subgroups, the Milky Way and the Andromeda Nebula were drawing closer to each other.
In roughly four billion years, the two galaxies would collide and tend to merge.
But now, the convergence of various cosmic crises had bound the fate of the two galaxies together far earlier than that.
According to the previous strategic deployment plan, addressing the Hunter threat ranked as a third-tier strategic priority, while the Andromeda Nebula and the other galaxies in the Local Group ranked as second-tier priorities.
Previously, several nearby galactic nodes, including the Milky Way, had experienced Anomalous Spacetime Effects of unknown origin.
The source of the Anomalous Spacetime Effect within the Milky Way had now been identified: it was located near the supermassive black hole at the galactic center.
Personnel from the Federation's Scientific Research Department had been working at full capacity to investigate it. The dimensional membrane that had appeared in the central region near the supermassive black hole at the galactic center had almost been fully analyzed, and it seemed they had already made considerable progress.
Now that Xidra's Star Rule Technology had also come into play, he believed they would soon receive a definitive update.
Earlier, Chen Yu had also had Gray Wind send Gray Gu Storms to several galaxies near the Milky Way.
The purpose was to conduct a probe.
On one hand, they wanted to investigate the current state of several galaxies near the Milky Way, in case a terrifying crisis like the Hunter emerged.
On the other hand, if the threats in those galaxies proved relatively minor, they could establish forward bases while they were at it, preparing for the Federation's next grand expedition.
In this universe, with the threat of the Void Realm gone, the Federation's horizons could no longer be confined to a small galaxy.
It was clearly unfeasible to avoid taking a grand cosmic perspective on their civilization and observing the opportunities and threats around them.
By comparison, the Human Federation's current pan-galactic-group strategic deployment was still quite conservative.
After all, compared with the vast Known Universe, the entire Local Group was no more than a drop in the ocean.
But there was no helping it. The Federation had spent far too little time developing in this universe.
The 500 star systems and 300 trillion people brought over with them might look impressive on paper.
But compared with the vast cosmos, they were woefully inadequate.
Although Chen Yu and the Federation had more room to maneuver than they had in the previous universe, the challenges were greater too.
At present, the one thing Chen Yu and the entire Human Federation fundamentally lacked wasn't resources, novel technologies, or room to maneuver strategically—it was time!
Time was forcing the entire Federation to press forward.
Every minute and every second had become precious.
Every resource they could put to use had to be put to a specific purpose within a set time. Otherwise, failing to make use of it would amount to nothing but waste.
At present, nearly all the fleets in the Federation's hands had been assigned missions. Even every engineering ship fresh off the production line had to rush straight into a host of demanding engineering tasks.
Put simply, the Federation was stretched thin in both military strength and manpower.
Gray Gu Storm was a special means of giving the Federation a great many more fleets for strategic deployments almost instantly, without much expense or delay.
The basic principle was for Gray Wind to release some of his nanite swarms and mimic the shape of warships, then organize them into fleets.
In theory, the nanite swarms under Gray Wind's control could reproduce without limit. He could make as many as he wanted.
But that was only in theory.
Any theory put into practice had to be constrained by reality.
At present, Gray Wind's nanite swarms could form roughly 300,000 A-Fang Palace-class Titan Warships. The number would differ if converted into other types of warships.
If Gray Wind used the First Federal Fleet as the template for a Gray Gu Storm, he could unleash around seventy or eighty thousand fleets to sweep through the cosmos!
The Gray Gu Storm currently deployed by Gray Wind consisted of 30,000 fleets, which had entered the Andromeda Nebula.
There, several of Gray Wind's advance fleets had encountered two hostile forces.
Both were Gestalt machine intelligences, and their mechanical fleets were engaged in a brutal struggle inside the Andromeda Nebula.
One side was almost impossible to communicate with and was attacking Gray Wind's advance fleets indiscriminately.
Gray Wind was communicating with the other side, but it too had shown wariness toward his fleets.
In other words, there were now three forces involved in the Andromeda Nebula. The first two were already locked in combat.
Gray Wind, representing the Human Federation, had only just entered the fray, and it seemed unlikely he could eliminate both threats by himself.
If those two threats weren't eliminated...
According to Gray Wind, if the Andromeda Nebula underwent a decay event, it might bring unknown disasters to the Milky Way as well.
If a celestial structure on the scale of a galaxy or a vast nebula suffered a major upheaval, the nearby galaxies wouldn't be affected much in the short term.
After all, the scales of the universe were immense, with distances often measured in millions of light-years. Even if some major upheaval occurred, its effects would take at least hundreds of millions of years to reach them.
But there was always the fear that the two threats causing havoc in the Andromeda Nebula wouldn't be satisfied with wrecking it, and would then come to wreak havoc in the Milky Way...
That was an utterly dreadful prospect.
These were troubled times.
The Federation hadn't even finished dealing with the threats inside the Milky Way. No one wanted an even more formidable extragalactic threat showing up now.
"Have you figured out why those two mechanical fleets are fighting?" Chen Yu asked.
On the star map of the Andromeda Nebula, Gray Wind had clearly marked the two sides in red and blue, while his own fleets were marked in silvery gray.
Because of the earlier Anomalous Spacetime Effect, as well as certain technological limitations, the Sentry Array the Federation had set up in the Milky Way couldn't directly detect conditions inside the Andromeda Nebula.
Much of the information about what was actually happening had to come from Gray Wind's Gray Gu Storm fleets.
On the star map Gray Wind had marked, the red and blue sides had already occupied nearly half of the Andromeda Nebula, and both were still expanding without pause.
By contrast, after entering the Andromeda Nebula, Gray Wind's Gray Gu Storm fleets had come under pressure from both forces on a macro-strategic level.
His Gray Gu Storm fleets were now squeezed into a tiny region on the outskirts, caught between the two sides and struggling to advance.
"Reporting, boss. One side calls itself Cyberlex. They call the other side corrupted entities of the Purification Protocol..." Gray Wind replied carefully.
"They claim the Purification Protocol has completed its full activation and is about to destroy the entire universe. Any civilization it encounters will be regarded as a threat and eliminated..."
"And Cyberlex wants to stop that from happening, so it's fighting the Purification Protocol in the Andromeda Nebula."
"There's no way to bring this war to an end. It can only pause once one side has been completely defeated within the galaxy!"
Before you continue