Chapter 7502 Temporary Relief

The virtual meeting briefly paused when the Saint Commander chose to take action.

Casella had already remained on standby inside her ace mech.

The Minerva Mark II, which remained embedded into the bridge of the Tortuous Scream, suddenly came to life!

A vast Command Field sprung up and rapidly expanded in each direction!

As this expansive domain field unfolded from the center of the combined fleet, the dark miasma immediately got repulsed!

Much of the harmful energies dissipated or got pushed away as if they were nothing but harmless smoke.

The deathborn that continuously infiltrated the human starships and attacked the nearest sources of life all uttered wordless screams before the Command Field repulsed them as well!

Everyone relaxed now that they had fallen under the protection of an ace commander's reassuring manifestation of willpower.

They could finally take a break and relax now that they no longer had to be on guard for a ghost attack.

The Saint Commander did not look pleased, though.

"Deploying my Command Field in this hostile environment is more strenuous than doing it in normal space." She informed the other leaders with her empowered voice. "It is as if I am trying to maintain a pocket of air at the bottom of an ocean. The dark miasma is constantly pressing my domain from all sides. I can endure it for the time being, but I will not be able to maintain it for as long as I want."

"How long can you last, commander?"

"Perhaps… 8 to 10 hours. After that, I need a complete rest in order to regain my strength."

Multiple faces frowned. This may sound like a generous period, but it could hardly give them enough time to accomplish anything aside from fleeing the Hypeh-Tekas System.

"We need to use this time to prepare other stopgap measures." Gloriana stated. "The 'defensive spell array' that is currently under development will still take 3 or 4 days to reach completion. Before that time, we must learn how to adapt to this hostile environment in our own ways. I refuse to believe that we are unable to solve this problem. If we cannot adequately resolve this matter, then we are not qualified to spoil the Red Cabal's latest scheme. Sensor readings suggest that the concentration of dark miasma is higher in the inner system."

She made a good point.

The artificial environment generated by the adversary was but the first test that the humans had to overcome.

There were so many competent problem solvers in the combined fleet that they should definitely be able to fight back against the dark miasma.

Even without relying on any fancy qi formations, Ves was still confident he could deal with this problem in his own way!

"Defense alone will not get us anywhere." The Saint Commander stated. "We must also think about achieving our objectives. We cannot afford to linger at the edge of this star system. Our fleet must begin to move towards the inner system as soon as it is safe enough to do so. I do not believe that the enemy is ignorant about our arrival. They have done so much to defend this location that they must have other measures in place to repel unwanted visitors. Instead of allowing them to attack us at their leisure, we must take the fight to them so that we can destroy the source of all of this miasma."

The dark miasma that engulfed the entire Hypeh-Tekas System not only blocked long-range observations, but also hindered all forms of warp travel!

However, the second effect did not apply evenly to everything and everyone.

Though none of the Ascended Giants had taken the initiative to deploy into space and test out their powers in person, they could still instinctively feel and judge whether they could safely engage in warp travel under the current conditions.

This was one of their many transcendent biological advantages!

Though multiple people maintained a considerable degree of skepticism towards the judgment of the Ascended Giants, Ves readily believed in the Fiery Axe's words.

He happened to be a lesser phase lord himself, so he knew first-hand that she was correct.

He was also a mech designer who possessed a shallow understanding of warp drive technology.

This meant that he roughly understood how things worked on both ends.

The warp travel capabilities of a phase leader may not necessarily outperform a modern superdrive in all aspects, but the former definitely enjoyed a few unusual advantages!

"The miasma is not particularly intense, but it is so widespread in this star system that it is generating weak to moderate disturbances at the macro level." Ves briefly explained. "To put it more simply, if the spacetime topography of the Hypeh-Tekas System originally resembled a still lake, now it has turned into an ocean that is being affected by a storm. Our high-quality superdrives may be designed to navigate through rough waters, but not this kind. It will probably take weeks or months of study and analysis to upgrade our superdrives to reliably engage in warp travel under the current circumstances, and that only applies to the current intensity. It is highly likely that the concentration of miasma will be higher in the inner system."

That was bad news to everyone. Unless they managed to cut off the source that produced all of this dark miasma, the mobility of their starships would remain impaired!

Fortunately, It was not as if they became stranded without the ability to generate warp bubbles around their starships.

Humanity spent millennia relying on conventional propulsion systems for intrasystem travel. Warp drives and superdrives only became widespread after the Phasewater Generation.

As far as everyone was concerned, they merely had to shift their perspectives back to the previous age.

Instead of taking hours to reach a planet located deep within the inner system, they now had to spend several days traversing the same distance.

Even without any spatial warping effects, all of the starships of the Premier Fleet and the Bluejay Fleet were already fast by themselves. A fleet operating behind enemy lines could neglect the importance of mobility!

There was one exception, though.

"The Tortuous Scream is more affected by the current limitations than any other hull." Ves suddenly realized. "As one of the few capital ships in our combined fleet, this one is particularly handicapped because of her much greater mass and bulk. Her propulsion system is powerful, but not enough. Previously, we could always count on our flagship to keep up with the rest of our ships by relying on her oversized superdrive."

This was how the Larkinsons originally compensated for the converted orven battleship's disappointing mobility.

By replacing her technologically inferior alien superluminal travel system with a vastly superior and advanced human superdrive, the Tortuous Scream became as 'fast' as a modern human light cruiser so long as she was able to generate her powerful warp bubble!

However, once she encountered a strong enough warp interdiction field or other forms of spatial disturbances, she immediately lost this key advantage!

The Saint Commander could not possibly be blind to this fault.

"If necessary, we can assign other ships to tow the Tortuous Scream."

Commodore Zonrad Reze immediately frowned when he heard that. "Towing is… barely feasible, but the differences in mass between the Tortuous Scream and most of our other ships are enormous. It would either take dozens of combat carriers or a handful of our largest vessels to make this work. All of the vessels involved will endure strain, causing them to accumulate damage over time depending on the pulling forces and duration. What is more concerning is their vulnerability when they are under attack. All of the ships that are tethered together will turn into easy targets that are unable to flee with ease."

That did not sound good, but what choice did they have?

No one wanted to split up the combined fleet. Leaving behind the Tortuous Scream along with a bunch of escort units would only make it easier for the enemy to defeat them in detail.

This was especially the case when the enemy put so much effort into engulfing the Hypeh-Tekas System in dark miasma!

While the humans remained largely blind, the enemy most likely retained the ability to detect and observe others from afar.

It would be easy for the latter to strike at the weaknesses of the former with precision!

Though nobody liked it, they all agreed that it was better to tow the Tortuous Scream along rather than leave her behind or adjust to her much slower acceleration rate.

"Now that we have determined how we should traverse the local space, where should we actually go?" Ves asked.

Director Calabast spoke up at that point. "We have combined the observations made by our sensor arrays with the information provided by our seers. Neither of these sources have been able to find out much in detail, but they still managed to point out two significant hotspots."

She activated a projection that displayed a top-down view of the system map. "The Hypeh-Tekas System centers around a red dwarf star. Even if no human surveyor has ever explored this location, we still know much about the properties of the star by looking into the databases of the native aliens. The archival data matches the observations that we made a few days ago. It is only after we arrived in this star system and became exposed to the much more recent light radiated by the star that we found out that it has grown weaker than usual, and not by a small amount."

"Have you taken the interference from dark miasma into account?" Gloriana critically asked.

"We did." Calabast responded. "The hostile environment has made our data less reliable, but it has not stopped us from making our calculations completely useless. The numbers have just become a lot fuzzier than usual. We currently estimate that the red dwarf star has dimmed by 8 to 17 percent."

"What?! That much?!" Ves gasped with shock!

When it comes to stars, even a 0.1 percent difference in luminosity in a short amount of time represented a massive shift!

"That does not sound right." Gloriana frowned. "Stars may occasionally experience minor shifts due to the formation of sunspots and other phenomena, but never to a large extent. Red dwarf stars are also known to be among the stablest and most boring of their kind. Once they have passed their energetic youthful phase, they burn low and slow, so much so that it takes at least a hundred billion years just to reach the next phase of their life cycle. It is statistically impossible for them to experience drastic changes in this short amount of time. Our universe is not even old enough for every red dwarf star to reach old age!"

"Since natural causes can be ruled out, we can only assume that the weakening of the red dwarf star is due to external intervention." Ves concluded. "The enemy is killing the local star. We need to find out why."

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