Positioned broadside, the Dreadnought Battleship aimed all four of its turrets at the target. A deafening roar, seemingly from another era, erupted from its ten massive cannons.
The powerful recoil made the Battleship list slightly, but against the sheer 20,000-ton mass of its hull, the effect was negligible—like a mayfly trying to shake a great tree.
In truth, the most powerful feature of the Dreadnought Battleship wasn’t its ten massive cannons providing Super Firepower, but rather its hidden internal power system.
The ability to propel a 20,000-ton Steel Giant Beast, allowing it to traverse dry land like a Land Ship and dominate the battlefield—this powerful propulsion system was the Dreadnought Battleship’s truly era-defining technology.
A conventional ocean battleship of the same class weighed less than 10,000 tons. The Dreadnought Battleship was more than double that, which was how it absorbed the recoil from a ten-cannon volley.
After one volley, the next round of shells was immediately loaded. The one-ton projectiles were fed into the cannons automatically, ready and waiting for the next command.
The fire button was in Chen Yanyan’s hands, and she pressed it again.
Although the control panel displayed a Fire Rate of one shot per second, achieving that ideal State was difficult due to various real-world factors. For instance, recoil caused targeting deviations that necessitated re-aiming.
Chen Yanyan made a quick calculation...
The actual Fire Rate was about one shot every two seconds. In one minute, it could fire thirty of the one-ton shells, each dealing 390 Damage.
With all ten cannons, that meant three hundred shells!
Enough to blanket the tens of thousands of Zerg Race members in a one-square-kilometer area.
The impact on the Swarm far surpassed that of the fifteen Tank Replicas on the front lines.
As the shells streaked across the sky, fired from five kilometers behind the primary defensive line, they struck the roiling Swarm in front of the human Warriors’ formation with pinpoint accuracy.
The thermal shockwaves from the explosions even reached the Warriors a kilometer away from the Hive, the force of the blast making them grimace.
The long-range bombardment continued for over a minute. Plume after plume of dusty mushroom clouds merged into a vast, yellowish-black dust storm that shrouded the landscape.
The few Tier Two Tiger Spine Zergs that managed to stumble out of the smoke and dust were already grievously wounded, merely struggling in their death throes.
They were promptly finished off by the Tier Two Battle Group hidden among the troops, who wielded Shotguns to complete the final reaping.
One-tenth of the Hai City Mother Empress’s Zerg Race was completely wiped out by this single wave of bombardment.
Combined with the two elite groups of the Tier Two Zerg Race that had been killed the day before yesterday, her losses were undeniably massive.
Even though the Hai City Mother Empress had now amassed over a thousand Tier Two Tiger Spine Zergs, she still felt a visceral sting of pain at these enormous losses.
Thus, when the smoke cleared, not a single trace of a Zerg could be seen on the blackened, scorched earth of the Hai City Suburban Area.
Even the Red-Armored Beetles, the most numerous and widespread of the Zergs, had vanished without a trace.
On the Hai City Mother Empress’s command, they had all retreated deep into the Underground Wormholes, sealing themselves inside.
Seeing this, Chen Yanyan had the frontline Warriors begin to clear the battlefield, ordering them not to advance any further.
According to the Life Radar, the ground beneath the Hai City Suburban Area up ahead had been thoroughly excavated by the Zerg Race, who had carved out a massive, multi-layered Nest complex.
It was teeming with the life signatures of the Tier Two Zerg Race.
If the Dreadnought Battleship were to advance deeper, it would be vulnerable to close-quarters harassment from the Tier Two Zerg Race. It would then be unable to provide cover for the frontline Warriors, leading to unnecessary losses.
While this was live combat training, it wasn’t the final, decisive battle. The main objective was for all the Warriors to rapidly achieve Tier One Awakening, meeting the minimum standard for joining the war.
By relying on the Dreadnought Battleship’s long-range support, they could eliminate the risk of heavy casualties, turning live combat into something more akin to routine training.
In the past, the fleet was only strong enough for guerrilla tactics and couldn’t support infantry-tank coordination. They could only train 150 new soldiers at a time, and if they encountered even a few dozen members of the Tier Two Zerg Race, they were forced to retreat early...
But now, thanks to the Dreadnought Battleship’s immense firepower, they could conduct live combat training for everyone at once.
This would allow the new recruits to quickly gain experience and overcome their psychological fear of close combat with the Zerg Race. It would help them mature rapidly, giving them the mental fortitude and practical experience needed for the final battle.
This large-scale combat training was like a mock exam, and the final battle would be their final exam for graduation.
If they could pass it and survive...
...they would become self-reliant, elite soldiers.
For now, every Warrior was desperate to grow stronger. Even the members of the Tier Two Battle Group wanted to kill more of the Tier Two Zerg Race before the final battle to enhance their own power.
Strength was the foundation for killing the enemy, and more importantly, the key to survival!
The maiden voyage of the Dreadnought Battleship—and the Warriors’ first large-scale training exercise—ended in the complete rout and annihilation of the Zerg Race.
It was a resounding victory.
However, as she watched the Warriors toss cartloads of Black Spine Zerg and Tiger Spine Zerg remains into the storage bay at the rear of the Dreadnought Battleship, Chen Yanyan did a quick count and realized nearly a quarter of the corpses were missing.
This was especially true for the Tier Two Tiger Spine Zergs. The initial observation had estimated around one hundred thirty to one hundred forty of them, but fewer than one hundred were recovered.
This meant that more than a third of the Tiger Spine Zergs had managed to escape the Dreadnought Battleship’s bombardment with their lives.
Chen Yanyan replayed the battle in her mind and identified the problem. ’The Super Firepower’s actual Fire Rate is too slow.’ After the first thirty seconds of the attack, the remaining half of the Zerg Swarm had time to react. They exploited the gaps between Cannon blasts to duck into the Underground Wormholes and escape.
The Zerg Race weren’t like the zombies in sci-fi movies. They wouldn’t just stand still and let you bombard them relentlessly.