Xyrin Empire

Shadow Space is an incredibly vast area; while it doesn't boast the extravagant scale of the Revenge Army's lair, sprawling across the entire universe, significant amounts of time spent on its construction and expansion have turned it into a space roughly the size of a small galaxy. We can now place many things requiring proper protection here, such as a special base located far from Shadow City.

Though it's called a base, sometimes I jokingly refer to it as a morgue.

It is an incredibly large space, enough to encompass several Earth-Moon systems. The boundaries are marked by a series of restricted buoys on the periphery. These buoys, spaced hundreds of kilometers apart, are each the size of a private car but form extremely powerful super gravity traps—a defensive grid not commonly seen in regular Imperial Bases. They serve two purposes: to prevent external forces from jumping in and invading the base in extreme situations, and to stop the base occupants from escaping without permission. These buoys, glowing faintly, combine to form a closed spherical grid, inside which a vast number of massive starships are anchored.

The mighty war machines have a silver-gray metallic sheen, their silent and majestic bodies forming a three-dimensional formation that exudes a sense of oppression in outer space. Besides basic lighting, no other lights are visible on their surfaces, not even the ever-glowing Ghost Energy Grid seen on normal Imperial Battleships, leading to the impression that this fleet hasn't been activated. The starships vary in size and model, from the smallest Assault Ships to the largest Eternal-class Mother Ships, making it almost worthy of being an exhibition of an Imperial Fleet. In the open areas between these warships are numerous space factories and integrated fortresses, flashing with lights. Their tasks are to produce the logistics components needed by the starships around them and to house maintenance personnel for the base. Other than that, the base enclosed within the spherical grid has nothing else—no starports for building new spaceships, no starship command centers serving as a rear base, and no rapid deployment barracks to replenish fallen starship crew members. These are all essential infrastructures for a standard Imperial Space Base, but none are present here because this base's ships have little chance of being deployed.

Recently, Sandora and I began questioning the necessity of this base's existence. It consumes extensive Imperial resources, including more than 80 logistics factories and a large number of skilled workers to polish, wax, and replace the three filters on the ships. We also need over a dozen mass-produced mainframes, more than 120 Imperial Technicians, and countless soldiers to guard these silent ships. Despite this massive investment, no one has yet found a way to activate those ships.

Strictly speaking, these ships are no longer products of the Imperial Technology System. They belong to an entirely different category—equivalent in level to Old Empire technology but entirely different in operation, despite the fact they look identical in shape and structure to our currently used and equipped ships.

"When we pulled these things out of the Big Nebula, I thought they were completely scrap, but Taville said these ships have no structural damage."

Sandora and I, along with a group of curious girls from home, walked through the empty bridge passageway of an Eternal-class Starship. The bridge was brightly lit, yet no soldiers were on post, nor was there the low hum typical of these passageways when a starship is in operation. Accompanying my words were only the sounds of a few footsteps, which made the passageway feel particularly desolate.

"Despite the absence of structural damage, none of the ships can be activated," Sandora said softly. "Their control systems are akin to autonomous machines, and they've fallen into 'death' after the collapse of the Literature Hall. To restart these ships, we either need to resurrect those autonomous control systems or replace them all with new control systems, the latter of which would be as costly and time-consuming as building a new ship from scratch."

"There's no need to explain in such detail; I haven't forgotten this much."

I helplessly rubbed my forehead, thinking my usual unreliability might have left Sandora with a rather unfavorable impression of me.

Sandora tossed her head: "I'm mainly afraid the readers might forget…"

Us: "…"

Yes, as mentioned earlier, these separately stored ships that look unlike any regular fleet starships are actually "spoils" we hauled back from the Big Nebula.

Following the Big Nebula campaign, with the collapse of the Holy Hall and the Literature Hall, most of the Holy Temple Guard Army had been eliminated by the Imperial Army and the World Alliance in the final battle. Numerous enemy ships chose to self-destruct alongside the Literature Hall, yet despite this, given the vast numbers, we still found quite a few Holy Temple Guard Ships that had not been destroyed. Most of these were newly built warships still docked in the starport, unable to enter the battlefield, and some had just completed repairs, similarly unactivated. These ships were taken as spoils of war and hauled back. At the time, I thought this would be an enormous gain.

Eventually, reality proved this was all just fate's way of adding trouble.

These shiny ships are utterly unoperable. Their control systems are an autonomous self-organized structure developed during the Holy Temple Guard's process of self-evolution. This system's code execution was entirely wiped out with the collapse of the Literature Hall. Despite numerous attempts, Taville failed to manage these autonomous ships as easily as regular Imperial Starships. Her greatest achievement was successfully starting the engines on two starships, but the problem was she couldn't locate the brakes—still hasn't to this day.

Bubbles attempted to interface her data port with these autonomous ships to understand how they "think." That effort also ended in failure as the kid's mom crashed for a full ten seconds, scaring me half to death. Upon recovery, her first request was to go shopping outside—a suggestion that almost scared me to death again. Luckily, the girl eventually returned to normal—thanks to Blizzard timely releasing Diablo 3.

Thus, after several failed attempts and with Sandora and I seeing no returns on further researching these autonomous ships, we decided to pause any reboot efforts, leaving them here to gather dust—not because it's impossible for the entirety of the Empire's research might to start these things, but mainly because it wasn't worth it: while there were plenty of these guard ships, they were disproportionate compared to the research investment required. They're just mass producible items, after all. At worst, I'll just listen to Qianqian and melt them all down to sell as steel sheets…

So in the end, they were all left here.

But today, these ships are about to be reborn and gain new life—at least theoretically, according to Taville.

"The modification has been ongoing for seven days, and if all goes well…"

Sandora whispered before opening the last hatch in front of us.

The magnificent command hall of an Eternal-class appeared before us.

"Today is the day these ships will be activated."

We stood at the edge of the officer platform, looking down at the circular hall below.

An Eternal-class command hall is usually brightly lit, like a stock exchange, with the flashing and beeping of various control terminals and a continual flow of bustling and orderly warship commanders. However, the command hall before us remained shrouded in dimness. Only a limited amount of ambient light emanated from the lofty Crystal Cluster, casting the room in ambiguity akin to Anwina's hut. More striking was the primary control area, which should have many control terminals, yet lay barren. Only a few strangely shaped projection devices displayed no-signal input warning boxes, making no provisions for operator seats.

This is an autonomous warship with no manual operation, and even till now, no one has managed to activate it, making such a command hall unsurprising.

Nonetheless, we stood gravely and somewhat tensely on the officer platform, staring at the dim, empty warship control center, each of us with impeccably serious expressions. Even Qianqian clutched my arm nervously, looking like she didn't dare take a deep breath—of course, it could be that seeing everyone suddenly quieting down, she simply joined in. This girl never has a concept of solemnity.

Everyone awaited a miracle.

"External link established, activation expected in fifteen seconds—at least theoretically."

Taville's mass projection appeared out of nowhere on the officer's platform, her image slightly trembling. She looked around at our surroundings and said, "Please forgive me for being presumptuous, but this experiment isn't necessarily safe. Your Majesties and officers entering the spaceship recklessly…"

"Do your job, you've reminded us many times, you've fulfilled your duty," Sandora interrupted Taville's last attempt to persuade with a slight smile. "I want to see this scene with my own eyes. Be ready to activate it."

"Your will."

Taville nodded, and the mass projection vanished into thin air.

A slight energy flow sound nearly coincided with her disappearance, as a low rumble emanated from the depths of the spaceship. The surrounding energy readings were gradually increasing. The process was very slow at first, but accelerated over time.

Everyone realized that the activation of this ancient spaceship had begun, and they couldn't help but hold their breath, watching the still dim and silent command hall.

As time ticked by, what responded to us was still darkness and silence. The variety of sounds coming from deep within the spaceship had reached the critical value for normal operation, indicating that the energy modules and main engine of the ship had completed their warm-up. However, the giant holographic projection that was supposed to light up in the command hall remained utterly dark, causing Sandora to frown slightly.

I checked the time; nearly thirty seconds had passed since the activation.

But just as everyone thought the experiment had failed, a line of light suddenly appeared in the command hall.

It was the holographic projection device in the center of the hall, which flashed suddenly just as we were about to give up and declare the experiment a failure. Although it didn't project any meaningful images, its activation seemed to signal something. Quickly, devices throughout the hall started to light up one by one as if a scheduling system was providing power to them sequentially. The massive command hall quickly initiated in functional areas, with the sound of rapid "dudu" emanating densely from the key energy hubs due to fast charging, while the expressions of disappointment on everyone's faces were desperately adjusting to a state of ecstatic joy.

"Suc… success!" Even the always composed Big Sister couldn't help but get excited. She smiled with unrestrained happiness, hugged me like she used to when she was in a good mood as a child, rubbing her cheek against mine. I, in turn, clenched my fist tightly in excitement, causing Dingdang to roll his eyes in my palm, then ripped and bit his way out. Bingdisi gave a loud whistle, and Lilina obediently took out two hundred yuan and handed it to Lin Xue: "You won, I really shouldn't have bet with someone like you."

Sandora, on the other hand, remained unusually calm at this moment. She coughed to quiet us down, then said solemnly, "This only means that the spaceship's autonomous module is now controllable, but… we can't yet be sure who is controlling it…"

"Why don't you just ask?" I said with a smile, pressing down on Sandora's shoulder. Inside, I knew she was filled with hope but hesitated to confirm it herself. So, I stepped forward and shouted, "PL-15, if you're awake, give us a sign!"

As soon as I finished speaking, the entire command hall began to echo with an exhilarating 100-decibel surround sound broadcast: "Squeak—Chen Jun His Majesty, is this the customary language of your Sky Zone?"

Me: "…"

Everyone else was stunned for a few seconds before they started to react, rolling on the floor, scratching on the railings, clutching their stomachs in spasms, or pulling out notebooks to record the Emperor's black history. I looked at Sandora with a black line across my face: "How could I not know it was so pragmatic—congratulations, this time it truly succeeded."

Yes, it really succeeded!

A wild idea, seven days and nights of research and argument, and today's smooth yet thrilling "activation" finally led to success: the Revenge Army would be reborn on a massive fleet.

This was PL-15's plan. It was conceived from the will of numerous exceptional Imperial officers to develop this genius-level adventurous plan, which was to emulate Gaia's method and anchor the souls of the Revenge Army's soldiers in the Imperial weapons.

The success rate of this plan is the highest we can currently think of. Taville immediately conducted nearly life-risking research on it (in fact, every time she starts a research project, I feel like she's playing with her life), and eventually, she discovered that we truly have a batch of spaceships capable of such a task—Holy Temple Guard Army ships with extremely complex and bionic structures—they have a mutated autonomous system that can carry the mutated souls of the Revenge Army, and the latter are also the most likely to symbiotically control these essentially inoperable ships.

Thus, this near-miraculous fleet began to form today: the brand new Revenge Fleet.

Sandora's face was aglow with excitement; it was unclear whether it was due to the success of the experiment or merely holding back laughter. She took a deep breath, finally calming down, and turned with a bright smile towards the now independently operating command hall. Now, the control terminals and information ports were working, with each projection screen rapidly refreshing the warships' data or the current adjustments. Meanwhile, the giant holographic projection in the center of the hall remained a white grid. Sandora looked at this grid and said, "PL-15, you could use the warship's holographic projection to show your form. Although it's not yet a body, it's better than just a grid, right?"

"I'm sorry, Your Majesty," a deep voice resonated, "I cannot fulfill your command. I have not fully adapted to this autonomous code. It will take some time to fully control all the equipment here."

"Don't worry about it," Sandora replied, her gaze curiously scanning the queue of autonomously operating machines in the room below, "How do you feel now? What are you doing?"

"I am attempting to update the ship's logical structure. It's employing an inefficient logic method, clearly accumulated redundantly during self-evolution and not cleared in time. After completing data updates on these logic structures, perhaps my synchronization rate with this ship could increase to over ninety percent. As for how I feel… I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I'm afraid I still cannot describe them; being integrated with a ship feels strange. It's not a body, but I can feel my soul extending to its every corner, every engine, every pipe, every sealing gate, all parts of what feels like my body. To control such a complex body is not easy, especially since it lacks conventional perception capabilities. I now need to use a set of information disturbance devices to determine my location in space. Moving forward requires activating twenty-six groups of thrusters in sequence, and the warship's main cannon is on a difficult-to-control line—this is a problem. I need some Imperial technicians to help or other assistants who can help modify the ship, to make it more suited to a soul's operating habit. Other ships are likely in the same situation, although smaller ships might be easier."

According to the translator, this text is about the successful activation of an old spaceship through a dangerous experiment devised by PL-15. A group of people, including Sandora, are observing the process in anticipation. There's a moment of tension when it seems like the experiment has failed, but eventually, the command hall lights up, leading to jubilation among the group. Chen Jun and Sandora exchange a brief moment of humor as PL-15 finally speaks, confirming the experiment's success. The ultimate plan, orchestrated by PL-15, was to achieve the Rebirth of the Revenge Army through the use of the Empire's weapons and Gaia-like techniques to integrate the souls of the Revenge Army soldiers with the war machines so they can be controlled symbiotically.

"""