Chapter 725.1: Unity Is Strength

Back in North Island, at the military harbor, a towering warship sat anchored in the center of the bay.

That was the Ocean Edge.

With a hull nearly 400 meters long and a displacement approaching 70,000 tons, it resembled a colossal beast resting in its lair. The cruisers and destroyers moored nearby were utterly overshadowed, looking more like eggs it had laid.

Angular armor covered every inch of its hull. Thick gun barrels stood in rows before and behind the bridge, pointing toward the heavens. Among them, the most eye-catching was undoubtedly the gigantic cannon mounted on the forward deck.

Its power could no longer be described in terms of caliber alone. The barrel was as thick as a locomotive and looked completely out of place on a naval vessel.

And in truth, it was.

The Human Federation had never maintained a navy in the traditional sense. The massive cannon had originally been removed from a starship, and its destructive power naturally could not be compared to conventional weapons.

At that moment, the crew aboard the vessel appeared to have received a signal. The battleship, which had been resting quietly in port, sounded a warning siren. Driven by its fusion reactor, the enormous vessel slowly stirred to life and moved 500 meters away from the dock.

The next second, the angular cannon barrel slowly elevated. The casing along both sides gradually unfolded, as though the weapon's belly had been split open, exposing the previously sealed chamber within. Violent currents crackled through the weapon. The air itself became restless, and the rapidly fluctuating magnetic field frightened away schools of fish in the surrounding waters.

On the bridge of the Ocean Edge, the captain stared unblinkingly at the firing solution and projected trajectory displayed on the screen.

The image showed a cone-shaped targeting zone whose central axis curved across the spherical surface of the sea, covering an island far away.

That was Peace Island, the second-largest military port in the Southern Seas, and now, the headquarters of the rebels and the so-called illegitimate government.

After learning that the submarine Cold Night had been sunk while operating near Coral City, President Chalas immediately issued an order.

They were to bombard Peace Island. They would avenge the 50 sailors who had died aboard the Cold Night!

At that moment, his executive officer approached and delivered a crisp salute. "Calibration complete!"

The captain nodded slowly. After only a brief two-second pause, he issued the order decisively. "Fire!"

Blue plasma accumulated terrifying amounts of energy deep within the barrel. The moment the command was given, all of it was released at once.

Bzzzzzzzt!

The waves crashing against the bow were instantly pushed backward by the enormous force. They collided with incoming swells and shattered into clouds of mist. The nearby sea appeared to collapse downward by nearly two meters before violently rebounding.

At the center of the expanding waves, a brilliant white beam shot skyward, brutally tearing apart the dark clouds overhead.

Even the 70,000 ton battleship visibly shuddered from the recoil.

And that was only the first shot!

Less than 10 seconds later, the capacitors completed another charge cycle, and another blazing white beam shot into the sky.

On the nearby shore stood crowds of onlookers, mostly soldiers from the nearby naval port and workers employed there. After the upheaval at dusk, President Chalas had declared a curfew. Not a single person could be seen on the streets. Yet the windows of countless buildings were cracked open ever so slightly, watching the lightning-like flashes rising from the sea.

Looking at the battleship in the distance that seemed capable of changing even the color of the night sky, the man standing on the pier shook his head. "... Using that thing for strategic strikes is a waste. They would be better off sailing a cruiser over there and shooting down a few drones or missiles."

His name was Varo, a corporal in the navy. He was currently wearing a sea-blue exoskeleton, and ammunition still hung from his belt, not yet removed. Just a few hours earlier, they had participated in the operation to seize the Presidential Palace. They had personally witnessed the collapse of a great building and the end of a brief but beautiful era.

Although Chalas still called himself president and everything seemed unchanged on the surface, everyone knew he had become a gigantic monster. He was basically a Laken on land.

No force remained capable of restraining him.

"Without submarine support, relying solely on a few destroyers for escort is still pretty risky..." Standing beside Varo, Sergeant Wangpa kept his eyes fixed on the warship through a pair of binoculars and curled his scruffy lips into a grin. "If nothing unexpected happens, this is probably as close as it dares to come."

Beyond-visual-range warfare existed on the sea's surface, and beneath it as well. Even the Federation's most powerful battleship, the Ocean Edge, could not withstand several nuclear-powered torpedoes.

If the Federation's battleships existed to hunt the Army's airships, then the Federation's submarines had been designed specifically to keep those battleships in check.

Shelter 70 had always worried that "the people outside" would steal the treasures their ancestors had recovered near the Heavenly Court. As a result, the waters produced no shortage of bizarre military concepts over the past century.

Among them was the Dolphin, a cargo submarine capable of returning to the ocean floor at any time, as well as attack submarines designed with their own battleships as hypothetical enemies, destroyers designed to counter those submarines, cruisers designed to counter those destroyers, and so on.

On paper, the Peace Island authorities possessed two fewer ships than the North Island government, but the three additional submarines they had were a serious problem, especially now that North Island had lost its only submarine, the Cold Night.

Clearly, Chalas knew exactly what cards he held.

Varo glanced at his superior and asked in confusion, "If I remember correctly, that main gun was designed for anti-ship combat. It can't be very effective against ground targets. Besides, I heard each shell costs a fortune."

Lowering his binoculars, Wangpa narrowed his eyes and replied concisely, "The value of a strategic strike isn't measured solely by the amount of destruction it causes."

"... What do you mean?" Varo frowned.

Wangpa looked at his subordinate and said meaningfully, "Other than North Island, where the capital is located, why do you think seven governors chose to stand with us?"

"Because of President Chalas?"

"It's because they're all within 1,000 kilometers of him. Because they have to answer to their own people. That's all." After a pause, he suddenly smiled and patted Varo on the shoulder. "Just like you and me. We also have to answer to who we are."

With that, he walked past Varo and headed toward the barracks.

To be honest, he agreed that the survivors of the Southern Seas should determine their own future and stop wasting resources fighting among themselves. They should be expanding outward instead. But he did not agree with Chalas's methods.

Even if President Mengo had been guilty of wrongdoing, he should have faced a court of law, not an extrajudicial execution.

Unfortunately, he was only a sergeant. Above him stood even more senior members of the military and, beyond them, the people who truly commanded the military.

Things had already reached that point. No matter how their children might judge them in the future, all they could do was continue fighting.

Still, he had a nagging feeling the war might prove far more difficult than anyone imagined...

...

On Peace Island.

One thunderous blast after another shattered the tranquility, deafening booms echoing across sea and land alike.

The half-ton kinetic shells were like artificial meteors.

Even without a single gram of explosive filler, their pure kinetic energy alone was enough to cause devastating destruction.

At the shell's nose, air had been compressed to an almost solid state. Behind it, a vacuum trail was violently torn through the atmosphere. The immense pressure differential relentlessly battered the projectile's tip, scorching what little drag-resistant coating remained.

Throughout the process, the shell's temperature continued to rise until it reached a critical failure threshold. One of the kinetic rounds broke apart and detonated in midair, erupting into a blinding white flash and a shower of molten metal that rained down upon the island's buildings like fireworks. Two others struck the island directly, blasting up towering clouds of dust. The remaining seven plunged into the sea, vanishing after throwing up massive columns of boiling water.

Even with meticulous calculations that accounted for factors as subtle as the planet's rotation, a distance of over 1,000 kilometers was simply too great. It was roughly equivalent, in the players’ world, to firing from the Paracel Islands all the way to Brunei.

The actual flight paths of the ten shells were far longer than 1,000 kilometers. The fact that three of them hit the island at all could practically be called a miracle.

The two shells that struck the island carved enormous craters into the mountainside. Fortunately, neither hit the harbor or submarine factory hidden behind the mountains, and no casualties were reported.

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