The Contest Begins

After the group discussed it to no avail, they ultimately decided that Thor's unreliable plan was the most practical.

But it was also the cruelest plan.

If they truly abandoned the Spaceships, Odin, Thor, the Warriors Three, and the others could rely on their immense strength to ensure their own survival, but no one knew how many of their soldiers would have to be sacrificed.

That was why Odin and Lucy had always opposed forcibly breaking through the spatial blockade and jumping directly in front of the enemy.

After all, sacrificing too many soldiers would affect their future rule.

An hour later, Thor shouted with an unhappy expression, "This won't work, that won't work—how exactly are we supposed to fight this war?"

Odin raised his head with an equally displeased expression and said in a deep voice, "Shut up. This war isn't as simple as you suppressing some natives!"

He understood that his son had enjoyed nothing but smooth sailing over the past several centuries and had never suffered a defeat, so Thor simply did not take anyone else seriously.

Thor had always suppressed natives with neither much technology nor powerful fighters. Over time, he had naturally developed the mindset of solving everything through brute force.

Wasn't this war also an opportunity to make Thor understand the brutality of cosmic warfare?

When Thor heard the dissatisfaction in his father's voice, he immediately fell silent.

Throughout all of Asgard, other than his mother, the person he feared most was Odin.

The scene soon fell silent once more.

After a while, Odin contacted Heimdall, who was still in Asgard.

"Have those enemy warships moved?"

Although they had a quantum entanglement communication system that allowed them to speak regardless of distance, they did not have a quantum entanglement projection system.

Therefore, they could only rely on Heimdall's abilities to observe the enemy.

Heimdall, who was guarding the Bifrost, immediately opened his eyes upon hearing the voice. He stood up, then raised his head and looked toward a distant point in the universe.

After a while, the pupils in his eyes seemed to vanish.

Only after a long time did he reply, "Honored Allfather, I only saw over two thousand cosmic warships. I don't know where the others went, but I seem to have seen something strange..."

He paused there.

Just now, he had seen something enormous. It seemed like a meteorite, yet also like a Spaceship, so he did not know how to describe it for the moment.

Seeing this, Odin asked curiously, "What strange thing?"

After hesitating for a while, Heimdall said, "Those things are very strange. They seem to be meteorites, but they have military facilities on them. I've never seen anything like them before."

Odin immediately frowned upon hearing that.

Military facilities on meteorites?

What were these enemies up to?

Were they not afraid that the meteorites would be drawn away by a Fixed Star's gravity?

He had once considered building military facilities on meteorites and turning them into interstellar platforms.

But meteorites were highly unstable. Any somewhat powerful attack would shatter them, and energy supply was also a major problem, so he had ultimately abandoned the idea.

However, these enemies seemed to possess extremely advanced technology. Perhaps they had overcome those technical difficulties.

At that thought, Odin's face immediately darkened.

He seemed to understand why the enemy had established a spatial blockade and delayed a direct confrontation.

They were likely doing it to build these interstellar war platforms.

After ending the call, Odin turned to Lucy and said firmly, "In my capacity as the Allfather, I order you to forcibly conduct a spatial jump immediately."

He was not an indecisive person. Once he made a decision, he carried it out without hesitation.

Lucy instinctively wanted to object, but when she saw the grave expression on Odin's face, she ultimately dropped to one knee.

"As you command."

Upon hearing his father's words, Thor immediately raised Mjolnir excitedly.

However, seeing the gloom on his father's face, he did not shout any of those cringeworthy lines.

Near the Black Hole.

Thanos sat on his throne, holding the Mind Stone as he cultivated.

At that moment, a dark-blue projection appeared in midair.

"Master, spatial fluctuations have appeared near the Fixed Star. A spatial rift is suspected to have opened."

Hearing this, Thanos opened his eyes, and a faint smile appeared at the corners of his mouth.

"Odin, you finally couldn't hold back, could you?"

He then stood and looked at the three-dimensional projection in midair.

The projection clearly showed it.

Near the Fixed Star where he was located, intense spatial rifts had appeared.

It was as if a black gash had split open in the universe, Devourer all light. Inside was nothing but darkness, and nothing could be seen at all.

However, because of the spatial blockade, the opening was still extremely small and could not possibly allow any Spaceship to pass through.

Seeing this, he suddenly frowned.

"Something's wrong. Even if Odin wants a direct battle, he wouldn't possibly jump straight into my face. That wouldn't be courage—it would be suicide."

As he considered whether it was a trap, several more spatial rift fluctuations suddenly appeared in the projection.

At first, he was puzzled, but he quickly understood the other side's plan.

"Interesting. Opening several spatial rifts at once, so I can't determine your true intentions? A fine game of feints and deception."

"However, you've underestimated the power of technology."

"Reinforce the energy of the spatial blockade. Also, deploy spatial bombs into every spatial rift, and place cosmic floating mines outside the rifts."

Spatial bombs were mines that could be deployed directly into spatial rifts. As soon as something touched one, it exploded.

However, the explosion from a spatial bomb was not a physical explosion, but a spatial collapse.

It was similar to the spatial grenades used by the Dark Elves in Thor: The Dark World, except spatial bombs were more powerful.

Cosmic floating mines were simply the cosmic version of land mines. They were triggered the same way: touch them, and they exploded.

Only, their power was far greater than that of a chemical explosion.

"Yes, Master."

Deep Blue quickly began carrying out the orders.

As orders were issued from Sanctuary II, some of the surrounding Spaceships began to move.

At the same time, the Black Order in other nearby star systems also began to act.

After all, the spatial rifts Odin had opened were not confined to a single Fixed Star system. There were also rifts in other surrounding Fixed Star systems.

However, the ships moving were mostly support vessels. The attack ships and defense ships remained still.

Although they were support vessels, they still had a diameter of two hundred meters. They looked like spheres with several antenna-like protrusions extending from them.

In the Vacuum of space, there was no need to consider gravity, wind, resistance, or anything else.

Therefore, appearance did not matter, and they could be designed however one wished.

But because spherical designs were simple to manufacture and could effectively protect core equipment, support vessels with no need for direct combat naturally mainly used spherical forms.

After these spherical ships flew near the spatial rifts, they first deployed black spheres only two and a half meters in diameter into the rifts, then deployed black rings one meter in diameter outside them.