The "death of the flagship" sent ripples across the battlefield, but... they were only ripples!
No one needed to apologize to a fallen "enemy." That held true for both sides...
As the Winged Race fleet advanced, Nie Yun's remaining thousand-odd mecha began engaging it at close quarters. The scene resembled over a thousand hornets swarming a crawling, armored creature.
The Winged Race fleet maintained a disciplined formation and tight coordination. Its ships supported one another, forming a dense, three-dimensional web of antiaircraft fire that shredded any mecha that emerged to charge forward. For a time, Nie Yun's Mecha Forces suffered heavy losses.
Yet plenty of attacks also struck the ships on the fleet's perimeter, sending ripples across their blue shields.
The enemy's defenses were steady and watertight, but the hornets were vicious, too, their venomous stings capable of becoming lethal through sheer accumulation!
In this close-range dogfight, both sides' accuracy had improved dramatically, and both were taking damage.
Judging by the situation, however, while the Mecha Forces' stubborn resistance had effectively slowed the Winged Race fleet's advance, destroying it with these mecha was absolutely impossible. A breakthrough was only a matter of time.
On the other front, without the combined warship's suppressive fire, the Sea Race Fleet was also stirring into action.
The Long-Lived One's firepower was fierce, and the Sea Race Fleet would inevitably suffer casualties if it tried to advance. Clearly, though, that alone was not enough to keep the Sea Race on the sidelines.
Although Ishar had destroyed the Sea Race Flagship without so much as a warning, that was an internal dispute to settle later. At least in principle, the Winged Race had merely eliminated an enemy blocking its path, leaving the Sea Race no grounds on which to condemn Ishar.
But Ishar was clearly already