Chapter 451

Chapter 451. Boss Raid. (1)

Anyway, after subduing the jokesters.

The 100 mighty users, including three rankers like me, calmed down the momentarily chaotic situation.

—————————————–

[Round 3 – Raid Format]

[Enemy Type: Ancient Empire’s Royal Fleet]

[Current Raid Participants: 100/100]

[Start Now?]

[(Y)/N]

[Current Acceptances: 100/100]

[Over 90% of participants must agree!]

—————————————–

[Time Remaining Until Battle Start: 5 seconds]

—————————————–

-[Let’s gooooo!]

-[Goooooo!]

-[Futostoo!]

-[G A J A]

-[DKDKDKDKDKDK]

-[Ooooh, I’m nervous about the raid]

-[Be ready to disband the fleet formation at any time]

-[Gotta avoid getting swept by the Ancient Empire’s capital ship’s AoE bombardment, yeah]

—————————————–

Before diving into the battle, after discussing with the users, we concluded that if we clump up against that damn Ancient Empire’s capital ship, we’d get wiped by its AoE weapons.

—————————————–

-[Everyone, remember this]

-[Strict frontline defense, yeah]

-[If the capital ship’s AoE bombardment comes, don’t try to hold the defense, just retreat]

-[It’s better to break the defense line and fight the escort fleet than to get wiped by the capital ship’s special attack while trying to hold the line]

-[Wait, wouldn’t that usually be bad?]

-[If the defense line breaks, you fight enemy ships in real-time, but fighting while getting hit by AoE bombardment hurts more]

-[Huh]

—————————————–

Users with large and beautiful rear support ships like the Mona Lisa or carriers were placed in the rear.

Most users formed a sturdy tanking fleet with battleships, dreadnoughts, and heavy cruisers to maintain a flexible frontline.

A small number of ‘mobile defense’ meta users, including Raksha, would roam inside the frontline for literal ‘mobile defense.’

With this plan, the users were brimming with bold confidence just seconds before the boss raid.

==========

Of course, the moment the battle actually started…

-KWAAAAANG!!!!

-BOOM!

—————————————–

-[Ah, f***! My Odin-class!!!]

-[The Odin always gets wrecked]

-[No, the Odin’s still alive, it can still recover!]

-[We don’t call an Odin that’s been split in half “alive”]

—————————————–

An unnamed user’s Odin-class battleship, positioned at the center of the frontline, got exposed to enemy fleet fire and was split in half.

The guy pushing forward stubbornly with three Bayern-class ships and a Griffin-class battleship…

Got hit by the Empire’s capital ship’s focused fire, turning one Bayern-class into a “Bay-ern-class,” leaving everyone speechless.

The firepower was way stronger than expected, and we were struggling to keep up.

But even those of us in the rear weren’t faring much better.

-Ziiing… BAM BAM BAM!

-Beep! Beep! Beep!

“Commander, enemy aircraft have teleported in large numbers at coordinates 36, 16, 22!”

“Ugh, damn, this is really pissing me off.”

“All ships, commence anti-air fire!”

—————————————–

-[Is this that teleport ambush thing?]

-[[Armor-piercing shell stuck in Anomalocaris’ flight deck.jpg] (Mona Lisa)]

-[Holy crap (Mona Lisa)]

-[What’s the rear even doing?]

-[Almost said that]

-[Yo, 250mm and 500mm autocannons are flying everywhere]

-[The pinnacle of absurdity, how can a 500mm be an autocannon?]

-[Well, the ships are at least hundreds of kilometers long]

-[With that level of absurdity, the weapons flying at us are missiles with diameters in kilometers, and you think you can block them with just 100mm? Lol]

-[[Scene of insane aircraft swarms and missiles being intercepted from the ‘bridge’.jpg]]

-[This is not the time for this discussion AAAAAH]

—————————————–

As expected of the Ancient Empire’s capital ship, whose parents are long gone, it was unleashing special attacks using the functions of the four major factions, just like I saw in the gallery earlier.

Like what just happened to me, it was paralyzing the rear fleet with surprise attacks using aircraft like the “Kraken’s” teleportation.

-[Damage!!!! Breath!!!! To the corner!!!!]

-[Ah]

-[[Heavy cruiser being crushed by the main gun of the Empire’s capital ship.jpg]]

-[What are you doing?]

-[My mistake, yeah yeah]

Front, back, doesn’t matter—the surprise attacks were so chaotic, and then they just started picking us off one by one with their powerful bombardment, shaking the users’ mental state.

Raksha, along with the ships she brought and a handful of mobile warfare meta users, decided to flank around…

-[Alright, we flanked]

-[We baited the escort fleet, they left a gap in the defense line on purpose, and now they’re swarming in, good]

-[Let’s gooooo]

-[Wait, why is a small ship popping out from inside the ship?]

-[We’re screwed, the barrier is way tougher than expected, what’s even its weakness?]

-[Ah, damn, wait]

-[Crazy]

Xenobia-style barriers were stacked up, completely shrugging off the concentrated fire from the flanking forces.

At the same time, 50 to 60 destroyers popped out from inside the massive hull like aircraft launching, covering the lack of escort fleet numbers.

-[Fall back for now] (Raksha)

-[If we go deeper, we won’t be able to retreat and will just get blasted by the main guns]

-[Ah, crap]

-[But how do we escape? Their small ships are faster than ours]

-[Just throw one high-speed battleship at them, we’ll use that to buy time for the rest of the fleet to survive] (Raksha)

-[Ah, got it]

-[Or one person can sacrifice themselves, yeah]

-[Better one person than losing everything, I’ll go]

-[What?]

The enemy fleet was way stronger than expected, and while one user sacrificed most of the fleet to buy time for the others to escape…

The situation was getting really intense.

And since all of this was being broadcast live in the gallery…

Title: Damn, the Ancient Empire’s capital ship is way more vicious than I thought?

Author: Yeah

Content: [Screenshot of a user’s Griffin-class battleship armor plate melting under the Ancient Empire’s capital ship firepower.jpg]

Including that firepower, each function itself isn’t particularly outstanding compared to the four factions, but the problem is that it can utilize all four specialties, so no matter how users approach, it instantly counters them.

The only downside, as someone mentioned last time, is that it can’t use all those functions at once, but…

Damn, our fleet isn’t exactly capable of fighting in split seconds either.

The enemy’s escort fleet isn’t missing, so contrary to expectations, even top players are struggling to exploit the gaps between function uses.

Heck, it could even pull off pirate alliance-style mobile warfare, but that hasn’t even shown up yet.

It’s seriously terrifying.

Comments:

-[It’s pure terror]

-[The difficulty setting seems off]

-[They should’ve increased the cooldown after using those functions, yeah]

-[This is accurate]

The gallery users watching the situation were all like, “Whoa, the Ancient Empire’s capital ship is seriously brutal,” freaking out.

But unlike the gallery users’ overreactions, the users gathered here, including Nana, Raksha, and Mona Lisa, were…

-[Alright, I roughly get it] (Raksha)

-[We just need to grab it and crush it properly] (Raksha)

-[Yeah] (Icarus)

-[We’ve roughly figured out the number of aircraft and the hidden ships inside] (Mona Lisa)

-[Before the enemy moves, let’s take away their mobility and gang up on them] (Mona Lisa)

-[Alright] (Icarus)

-[Damn, it was a pain figuring it out since there was no vanguard]

-[If the ships weren’t repairable, I would’ve seriously grabbed everyone by the collar]

After taking a tolerable amount of damage and breaking our heads, we finally managed to gauge the level of that damn Empire capital ship.

Based on the intel we gathered, we started a proper strategy to take it down.