Chapter 527

Episode 527. The Ancient Empire was full of romance. (5)

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[Global Announcement]

<<[‘Grand Cross’ Event Commencement!]>>

[A message to all Commanders!]

[In the distant ancient times, the Titan-class mobile fortresses known as ‘Grand Cross,’ which had ceased activity for some reason, have all simultaneously awakened from hibernation and begun their operations!]

[As these massive mobile fortresses, created by the Ancient Empire for the inexplicable reason of ‘the romance of giant ships and cannons,’ started moving, all factions in each region began to tighten their nerves.]

[The problem is, we don’t know why they’ve awakened from hibernation, but perhaps it’s because they’ve been neglected for too long without maintenance?]

[As soon as the Grand Crosses awoke, they began indiscriminately attacking not only nearby star systems but also every ship and life form they encountered along the way!]

[As if merely being mobile fortresses wasn’t enough, they’ve also launched large-scale vanguard fleets and escort fleets from within.]

[Of course, given the scale of the universe, leaving them be won’t put the universe in danger or anything.]

[However, if planet-class mobile space fortresses capable of warp travel start running amok, the situation could get worse in many ways, according to the opinions of the strategists within each faction and Commanders’ bases!]

[Event Stage Progression]

[Stage 1 – Encounter with the Vanguard]

[Large unmanned fleets consisting of small and medium-sized ships are attacking Commanders’ bases!]

[The level of these fleets will scale according to the power possessed by the Commanders.]

[If you are docked at a base, an additional fleet will be reinforced to attack the base separately from your fleet!]

˪[The base attack fleet includes large ships.]

[Stage 2 – Battle with the Main Force]

[After the vanguard is defeated by the Commanders, the Grand Cross’s command AI immediately dispatched a large escort fleet to the Commanders’ bases!]

[This battle will take place on a separate event map, and each battle will start when 1,000 Commanders gather.]

[Various large ships, including Dreadnoughts and large aircraft carriers, will engage in combat with the Commanders’ fleets.]

[The ‘Main Force’ will conduct its offensive under the control of a command ship directly receiving orders from the Grand Cross, and if the command ship is destroyed, the ‘Main Force’ will receive significant debuffs.]

[Stage 3 – Fortress Decisive Battle]

[After confirming that both the vanguard and the main force have been suppressed by the Commanders, the Grand Cross’s command AI immediately activated all internal shipyards to restore fleet power and began a direct offensive by firing its main cannons at the Commanders!]

[When a certain number of Commanders’ fleets gather, the main cannon, ‘Grand Cross Cannon,’ will fire!]

[The Grand Cross Cannon cannot be fired near the fortress.]

[Find and destroy the command and control center, the heart of the fortress!]

[Event Precautions!]

[The fortress’s main cannon, the ‘Grand Cross Cannon,’ will occasionally fire during battles to support its drone fleets.]

˪[The Grand Cross Cannon will display the affected area of its bombardment a few days before firing, so please take note.]

˪[*Warning!* The Grand Cross Cannon is one of the most powerful weapons, and even high-level base walls cannot guarantee complete protection.]

[Titan-class mobile fortresses cannot be captured by Commanders, so please understand.]

[This event does not have a set duration.]

[PVP will be restricted until the event ends.]

[Time remaining until event start: 12 hours 1 minute 22 seconds]

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‘There’s a lot going on.’

Seeing the announcement that made me want to scream, “Put a spoiler warning on it!” was the first thought that came to my mind.

Of course, that thought only lasted for a very short moment…

After reading the announcement from start to finish again, I nodded my head and input the event’s progression method into my mind in detail, then said:

“This is going to be tough.”

“Yeah, I didn’t expect them to give us unlimited time.”

As Jessica said, this time it’s practically a ‘siege battle,’ so maybe that’s why.

The developers seemed to be saying through the announcement, “Hey, you’re going to spend a looooooot of time on this event,” or maybe, “While you’re busy enjoying this event, we’ll take a break too.”

Of course, the developers…

No matter what you think, it wasn’t particularly important.

What *was* important was that this event was a biiiiiig event.

I pushed all the random chatter to the back of my mind and, since there was still time before the event started…

“Open sesame, community door!”

I immediately opened the gallery and chat window to check how other users were reacting.

And as always, our user friends were already busy chatting away the moment the official notice dropped…

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**Title:** What are the admins doing? My patience is gone;;

**Author:** ㅇㅇ

**Content:** [Image of the highlighted part in the notice: “Mobile Fortress cannot be captured.”]

Patience gone;;

Of course, players should be able to capture it and go, “Huh?” Then blast those jerks with the main cannons! Duh?

If you’re gonna eat these super cool massive ships, you should obviously get to keep them, right? Lololol

**Comments:**

– [How are you gonna handle the maintenance cost if you eat that?]

– [The Capital Ship of the Ancient Empire had daily maintenance costs in the hundreds of thousands, didn’t it?]

– [It’s cool and all, but once the event ends, all the strategies will come out, and it’ll just turn into pretty trash. Yep.]

– [Tsk tsk, you don’t know the LOOOOOOOOMAN.]

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**Title:** Must-read) Important points for this event.txt

**Author:** Philippine Buster

**Content:** [Image of the event notice with the part about fortress capture underlined.]

See, it specifically says the Mobile Fortress can’t be captured.

That means everything else is fair game, right?

LOLOLOL time to go full-on pillage meta. Bye~

**Comments:**

– [Sometimes I look at these guys and think they’re more pirate-like than the actual Pirate Alliance.]

– [True tho;;;]

– [Not “true tho,” it’s just true.]

– [I wrote it like that on purpose.]

– [But aren’t small ships worse than regular-grade ships? Are they even worth capturing?]

– [You can use Fleet Points to squeeze in one more ship, though.] (Author)

– [No, what I’m saying is, even if you do that, the ship you capture won’t be worth it.]

– [Capture it in the first battle, use it as bait to blow it up in the second battle, then grab a new one. Easy.] (Author)

– [Smart.]

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There were a lot of discussions like this going on.

Most users seemed pretty bummed that they couldn’t get their hands on the Mobile Fortress…

But some users were excited, saying this was their chance to boost their fleet’s strength.

And unlike the gallery, where opinions were split about 50-50, the chat…

Well, let’s just say the internal opinion of the “Icarus Republic” (I hate this name) was…

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**[The Most Sacred and Great Official Chatroom of the Icarus Republic]**

**[Notice: Grand Cross Event Preparation!]**

– [Now’s our chance to finally build a proper fleet!]

– [Wait, where did all the resources we’ve been mining go?]

– [Obviously, we used them to upgrade the base.]

– [Oh.]

– [We don’t have superhumans, but we have a fleet!]

– [What about people who have neither?]

– [Just pick up the scraps others leave behind.]

– [Oh.]

– [But how do the settlements within our president’s territory fight against the event fleets?]

– [No clue.]

– [They’ll probably warp or something and come right to the base, no?]

– [Yeah, otherwise our president would get wrecked.]

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Maybe it’s because they’ve been pillaged so much…

But naturally, they’re showing the very admirable qualities of aspiring pillagers, looking to boost their strength through plunder.