Chapter 896: Warlord Melee |
This was a ruin zone after the great war. Here lay endless warship wreckage, some belonging to Xiao Yu, some belonging to the Virtual Life Civilization. Some of the wreckage was relatively well preserved, and one could still roughly make out the shape of the warships. Some wreckage, however, could no longer be recognized at all. They were twisted wantonly like tangled dough, with no value left for reuse.
This belt of ruins covered an enormous area. It was at least seven light years long, more than two light years wide, and nearly several hundred billion kilometers thick. Its volume could even compare to some small interstellar dust clouds.
In recent times, relatively large-scale chaos had broken out less frequently within the Virtual Life Civilization, but small-scale chaos still kept occurring without end, and there was no sign at all of it subsiding. Amid this boundless chaos, this belt of ruins had quietly become the place where conflict erupted most often.
A City-Class ship was cautiously moving through this belt of ruins. Recently, many lone ships had come to this ruin belt to explore, trying to find usable equipment and the like here, then dismantle it and turn it into material reserves for themselves. Clearly, this City-Class ship had come with exactly that intention. It moved through the wreckage, from time to time using strange beams of light to scan the warship wrecks around it, checking whether there were parts or equipment inside that it could use…
Coming here to search for materials was an extremely risky activity, because many ships also chose to hide inside these ruins, like crocodiles lying in ambush waiting for prey. Once they discovered a ship they believed they could defeat, they would launch a surprise attack. After all, searching for usable materials in the ruins was not easy, while destroying an intact ship and then searching that destroyed ship for usable materials was something with a much higher success rate.
Precisely because of this, the ship that had come here searching for materials was becoming even more cautious. Because it had no idea how many enemies might be hidden around it, ready to make a move against it.
It finally discovered a relatively well-preserved warship wreck. Its scans also showed that there were at least several thousand usable parts inside that wreck. So it joyfully moved toward it, opened its hatch, and dispatched robots to cut apart the wreck. Everything was proceeding smoothly, but just as its robots had arrived beside the wreck, a sudden change occurred.
At least a dozen ships suddenly appeared beside it. Among them, the largest was clearly a Province-Class ship. The dozen or so ships joined forces, and with just one coordinated strike, they disabled this ship’s power, while its weapons and defense systems were also paralyzed. These suddenly appearing ships clearly had abundant experience. They knew exactly where to strike in order to preserve the target ship’s integrity to the greatest extent. The more intact the ship remained, the more usable materials they could obtain.
Without any communication, these dozen ships carried out their actions in silence. After the City-Class ship lost its mobility, offensive power, and defensive power, they silently approached it, dispatched robots through the hatch it had failed to close in time, smoothly found the ship’s main control computer, and without hesitation cut off its power supply. After waiting more than ten seconds, they reconnected the power. The computing terminal started up again, but the replicate that had once been inside it was nowhere to be seen.
After absorbing this ship, the team, now strengthened once more, hid itself again and continued waiting for the next prey to take the bait…
It was a very strange scene. Amid these endless wrecks, such things were happening everywhere. Some teams succeeded, and so their strength grew greater and greater. Some teams failed, because the ones who came searching for usable materials were not lone ships at all, but other groups that had already reached agreements, and so they themselves were swallowed up instead. Through actions that either succeeded or failed, one group after another sprang up like bamboo shoots after a rain. Sometimes these groups would encounter one another, and then a war would follow. And no matter which side ultimately won, they would always merge together afterward, becoming a new and even stronger collective.
During the previous chaos, these replicates had already come to understand one truth: individual strength was insignificant. So they temporarily united in order to raise their own chances of survival. This was a very good development for them, but a very bad one for Xiao Yu. Xiao Yu, who had been monitoring this place the whole time, knew that for the Virtual Life Civilization, the era of melee was already over. What would come next was the era of ‘warlord separatism.’
The number of such small groups surviving by relying on the belt of ruins was not just in the hundreds of millions. Some of them completed the most basic accumulation and then left this place, joining larger-scale struggles. Outside the belt of ruins, there also existed countless group powers, and these groups were larger in scale and stronger in combat power. They were usually formed around a Planet-Class ship or a Star-Class ship as the core, gathering a large number of smaller warships around them. The small ships and the large ships reached certain agreements. The large ships would not devour the small ships, and the small ships would obey the commands of the large ships. In this way, a group was bound together by shared interests.
There were likewise many such groups. They united together and relied on devouring other groups to strengthen themselves. After victory, the large ships would occupy the greatest share of the benefits, while the small ships would divide among themselves the scraps left over after the large ships had eaten. No matter how these benefits were distributed, as long as the group kept winning, they could continue strengthening themselves without interruption.
Within such groups, sometimes the power of a large ship would grow to a certain extent, and then it would use sudden methods, abruptly damaging the small ships under its command, causing them to lose their mobility, defense, and offensive power. Then it would have its own replicates occupy those ships. In this way, it completed a transformation, from a simple alliance of interest into a solid small Virtual Life Empire entirely occupied by its own replicates.
By now, four full years had passed. The total number of ships in the entire Virtual Life Civilization had dropped to below fifty billion. The number of power groups could not be counted, but presumably the ships controlled by such groups numbered around thirty billion. Power groups were fighting among themselves, and lone ships were also battling one another. The chaos had still not stopped, but some unspoken rules had already begun spreading through this shattered civilization.
Xiao Yu slowly shook his head.
“Now is still not the time for me to make a move. I still do not have the confidence to completely destroy them. Now is also not the time for my hidden pieces to act. Continue waiting…” Xiao Yu said to the Architectural Civilization.
After power groups developed and expanded to a certain point, they would no longer rely solely on looting others to sustain their development. Inside some large groups, the total number of ships had already exceeded one hundred thousand. They had even managed to gather enough materials for building construction bases by dismantling ships. Thus, a ‘warlord’ capable of sustainable development, with a stable source of ships, appeared in this chaotic starry sky. It was just that the efficiency of these construction bases in producing ships was highly questionable.
As for the large construction bases left behind from the time when Virtual Life Number One ruled the entire civilization, not a single one remained by now. They had all been destroyed during the early stage of the chaos. This was something Xiao Yu had anticipated. When everyone wants the same thing, usually it means no one gets it. Even if someone temporarily obtained it, it would be seized away again by others. And amid these endless struggles, the fate of these construction bases being destroyed had long since been predetermined.
The appearance of construction bases meant that the situation had now developed into a new stage. After possessing construction bases, the actions of the large power groups began to show certain patterns. They also began making plans instead of slaughtering blindly like headless flies. Against such power groups, lone ships had no ability to resist. They were either swallowed up or directly destroyed. The larger the power group, the faster it developed, and the larger it became. As for the smaller power groups, unless they encountered some special stroke of fortune, their only fate was destruction.
Under such circumstances, the first group with a scale exceeding one hundred million appeared. It already had some of the bearing of a Virtual Life Empire. Inside it, there were complete logistics facilities and a tight organizational structure. For them, war was no longer a chaotic melee, but an operation with careful planning and logistical support.
And by this time, the total number of ships in the entire Virtual Life Civilization had already dropped to below thirty billion. Lone ships had basically disappeared. The whole civilization had roughly been divided into more than one thousand five hundred warlords of varying size. The largest warlord had over one hundred million ships, while the smallest had only about one million.
The development of the situation had entered yet another new period. At this time, wars were no longer fought on a whim. Every war would only be launched after the leader replicates had thoroughly weighed the overall benefits. Order had quietly taken shape, and for Xiao Yu, the time to carry out the next step of the plan had also arrived.