The Star-Destroying Assault Came Too Suddenly

It was unclear whether that mocking video had had an effect, but the Galactic Alliance's military decisions had clearly become much more cautious. Multiple fleets now provided mutual support for one another.

Whenever a fleet engaged planetary creatures, several fleets within a few light-years, along with the Colossus Fleet, would immediately enter faster-than-light travel and rush over.

It became much more difficult for Lu Shang to swallow Galactic Alliance fleets with just a few planetary creatures as he had before.

Still, it was not much of a problem. This mutual-support model directly caused the Galactic Alliance's pace of conquering the Swarm Sector to slow significantly.

After all, for fleets to support one another, some fleets had to remain idle and out of combat. If they were all tied up fighting, which fleet would be able to support its allies?

To solve this problem, they would need to further expand their current fleet size. But production took time as well. Warships were not something that could simply pop out the moment they decided to build them, like eggs laid by a hen.

So, during this period, Lu Shang did not need to worry too much about the Galactic Alliance pushing forward like mad.

The Overmind was fairly farsighted. After foreseeing that the Galactic Alliance was expanding its fleet, it specifically came to discuss the matter with Lu Shang.

"What are you panicking for? Them building warships on a massive scale is exactly what I want."

"I don't understand," the Overmind replied.

Lu Shang said, "Warships have to be built in armories. And with production on such a massive scale, there's no way the commotion will be small, nor can there be no news at all. Now is when the locations of their armories will be exposed."

As he spoke, Lu Shang sank his consciousness into the Swarm Network.

Banner Union Sector, red dwarf system.

Enormous artificial machinery orbited the red dwarf while continuously extracting scorching stellar matter and feeding the cooled material into processing plants.

Colossal vessels far larger than Galactic Alliance battleships rested quietly in space docks, undergoing assembly. Countless machines moved up and down through the docks, while brilliant sparks occasionally flashed across the massive mechanical constructs before vanishing.

This was the closest war machine cluster to the sector occupied by the Overmind Swarm. It was also responsible for maintaining the first new-style fleet. The Galactic Alliance hero Beint had once visited this place to observe the construction of warships.

Now, although Beint's fleet, which they had been responsible for maintaining, had departed, the supervisor had not gained any leisure because of it. As the war intensified, the construction tasks assigned to the war machine cluster increased by the day.

Take the recent period, for example. The Colossus Fleet and the new-style fleet had all been destroyed less than half an hour after engaging the enemy. The supervisor of the war machine cluster and the other logistics personnel had practically seen their blood pressure spike. Replacing those losses would take them quite some time.

The supervisor asked, "How much longer until Construction Project Four is completed? The front lines are waiting to use it."

A subordinate replied, "Colossi require too many construction resources. To meet the target of building eight thousand Colossi, we'll probably need some more time."

Knowing the front lines were having a hard time as well, the supervisor urged, "Hurry. It must be completed as soon as possible. The soldiers at the front have had no choice but to slow their advance because they lack enough warships."

"How many can be completed by the next stellar orbit?"

Faced with his superior's question, the subordinate thought for a moment before answering, "About four thousand five hundred Colossi."

"Deliver those four thousand five hundred Colossi first during the next stellar orbit," the supervisor said.

"Understood!"

The subordinate gave a military salute and was about to turn and leave.

Suddenly, the ground shook violently. The intense tremors left both the supervisor and subordinate inside the room unable to keep their footing.

They were in space. Earthquakes should have been impossible here.

That left only one explanation...

Still terrified, the supervisor immediately activated a projection and asked the subordinate responsible for monitoring, "What's happening?"

"The star—it's the star! The star is collapsing!" the monitoring subordinate reported incoherently.

Apparently finding speech too slow, the subordinate simply switched the camera feed and aimed it toward the red dwarf.

They saw that countless massive vortices had appeared across the once round, scorching, crimson surface of the low-mass star orbited by the war machine cluster!

A quick scan confirmed that these vortices were frantically devouring the star's matter!

A star was a structure of opposing forces, formed by the mutual resistance between nuclear fusion and gravity. The thermal energy generated by nuclear fusion acted upon the atoms, and the atoms' thermal motion supported the star's entire mass against its own gravity.

Now, part of the star's mass was being devoured by microscopic black holes, causing an uneven distribution of gravity. This meant gravity was weakening in some regions of the star, and its nuclear fusion would inevitably spiral out of control.

The star exploded.

The stars hosting Galactic Alliance war machine clusters were detonated by Black-Hole-Induced Strikes launched from outside their stellar systems.

Because the orders had been issued through the psionic network and the attacks launched simultaneously, by the time the Galactic Alliance reacted, more than a hundred thousand Galactic Alliance war machine clusters had vanished.

This incident shook the entire Galactic Alliance's decision-making hierarchy. Member civilizations urgently redeployed large numbers of warships to protect their remaining war machine clusters.

These were the industrial cores of their civilizations. No one knew how much manpower and resources had been spent constructing them in the first place.

The impact of this sudden attack was extraordinarily severe. It even left the various members of the Galactic Alliance unable to sit still. At the meeting, civilization representatives furiously accused the Alliance military of inaction.

"What the hell are your fleets doing?! Why didn't you pin down the enemy's main force?!"

The Alliance military representative explained, "The Alliance military needs to capture the Swarm's defensive positions in space. Otherwise, we could easily fall into the disadvantage of being surrounded."

"Then launch a full-scale offensive! Why are so many fleets remaining on alert without engaging in combat?" a civilization representative demanded.

The Alliance military representative explained, "Those are support fleets. If the fleets assigned to support others enter combat themselves, they will be unable to provide support to other fleets that are fighting."

Those explanations were perfectly reasonable, but they were only reasonable. The civilization representatives could not accept them; no amount of explanation would help.

"Don't talk to us about military strategy. We don't care about that. All we know is that the Alliance's military-industrial system needs the Alliance military to fall back and defend it. Do you think your logistical supplies just appear out of thin air?"

"Without the logistics industry, the Alliance military can go fight the Swarm creatures with rocks picked up off the ground!" the civilization representative roared furiously.

After this surprise attack, offense and defense had switched places. The Galactic Alliance's strategy shifted into a defensive posture.