Chapter 693: Gaining the Upper Hand First

The moment the black giant legion set foot on the battlefield, the outcome of the cosmic battle was already decided.

Below the massive fissure in the plane barrier, a black torrent was pouring out madly.

The vanguard of the black giant legion surged into the outer space of the tentacle tree civilization’s plane like a tidal wave. Millions upon millions of colossal figures blanketed the void. Especially the sixth-rank black giants—each several hundred meters tall, their bodies covered in flowing black liquid metal that gleamed with a cold, heavy dark luster under the distant stellar light.

Over the years, the black giant legion Jie Ming had accumulated was simply too vast.

So vast that a flowing black curtain had formed beneath the fissure, completely obscuring the legions still streaming in from behind. As the leader, Molten Mountain naturally stood at the very front of the legion.

His enormous body was like a moving mountain. The vertical maw at the center of his chest slowly split open, spewing out scorching streams of air.

Then…

“ROAR!!!”

A low war cry infused with spiritual fluctuations boomed through the void—an order to attack.

At the same time, the opposing border fleet had finally completed its hasty reorganization.

The remaining several hundred warships swiftly tightened their formation. Layer after layer of joint shields unfolded,淡 blue energy patterns interlocking around the fleet like a makeshift giant bulwark.

The main cannons at the bows began charging simultaneously, clusters of blinding energy radiance glowing deep within the muzzles.

Inside the bridge, the fleet commander’s eight crystal eyes still carried irrepressible tension and panic.

Yet he forced himself to remain calm and slammed down the order.

“All warships… open fire!”

In the next instant, the fleet’s firepower erupted in full!

Hundreds of warships fired at once—energy beams, electromagnetic shells, plasma torpedoes, high-energy lasers…

Almost every conventional weapon in the tentacle tree civilization’s arsenal was poured out without reservation.

The fire density was so extreme it briefly pushed aside the elemental turbulence in the void.

Countless beams and projectiles intertwined into a barrage over a thousand kilometers in diameter, smashing head-on toward the black giant legion!

However, when the attacks struck the foremost black giants, the impact was strangely “quiet,” lacking any normal feedback from weapon hits. Energy beams slamming into the liquid metal layer on the black giants’ bodies were like heavy rain falling on a lake surface—raising only faint ripples before vanishing completely.

Electromagnetic shells spun at high speed as they smashed into black giant chests, yet the instant they made contact, all kinetic energy was mysteriously drained away.

The scorching metal casings were melted into liquid by the black giants’ body temperature, then slowly swallowed by the black liquid metal layer like water droplets returning to the sea. As for the plasma torpedoes…

The instant they struck, they only managed to flash an extremely brief, intense light before the entire plasma mass was directly disassembled by the black giants’ energy-absorption talent, converted into pure thermal energy and evenly distributed throughout their bodies.

After the entire round of saturation bombing ended.

Not a single injured black giant appeared in the legion.

The sixth-rank black giants that had been heavily focused even kept walking without pausing.

One of them lowered its head, glanced at the electromagnetic cannon fire still bombarding its chest, then casually slapped at it.

The motion was light and effortless, as if brushing dust off its clothes.

Seeing this scene, the air inside the bridge froze solid.

The treetops of many young operators had begun trembling uncontrollably.

At that moment…

“Shields! The shields are dropping!!”

An operator on a escort ship suddenly let out a sharp alarm.

The black giants had begun their counterattack.

Dozens of sixth-rank black giants swung their fists simultaneously.

They didn’t even need to physically cross the void to reach the fleet. The mere elemental shockwaves from their punches acted like invisible heavy hammers, slamming directly into the joint shields.

BOOM!!!

The shield energy readings plummeted instantly. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Before the operators could report the exact decay data, the second wave of fist force arrived.

The joint shield shattered with a thunderous boom!

The blue barrier enveloping the entire fleet exploded into countless energy fragments in the void, like a soap bubble being crushed.

With the shields gone, the fleet was completely exposed.

The fleet commander stared fixedly at the main screen, the light in his crystal eyes flickering violently.

Finally, he made his last decisive call.

“All warships, delay as long as possible! Activate self-destruct protocols… ram them!!”

The instant the order was issued, the bridge fell into dead silence.

This was the most extreme tactic in the tentacle tree civilization’s military doctrine.

A warship’s self-destruct system would instantly release all its stored energy reserves. The resulting explosion far surpassed conventional weapons.

If luck was on their side, it might even tear open the enemy formation through suicidal ramming.

Those assigned to the border legion were all elites of the elites, so several warships reacted quickly.

The engines of dozens of warships overloaded simultaneously. Their hulls turned into burning meteors, hurtling madly toward the black giant legion.

Soon, the first escort ship slammed into the chest of a sixth-rank black giant.

BOOM!!!!

The self-destruct system detonated instantly.

The entire warship was completely consumed by its own energy. Blinding firelight swallowed more than half of the black giant’s body.

A few seconds later, the explosion dissipated.

The black giant lowered its head to look at its chest.

A crater more than ten meters wide had been blasted into the liquid metal layer.

At the edges of the pit, the black substance was wriggling rapidly, flowing back as if alive.

In the blink of an eye, the crater vanished completely, and the injury had fully healed.

The black giant raised its head again. Its chest maw cracked open slightly, revealing a row of sharp fangs like black obsidian.

Its expression looked less like it had been injured and more like it had been lightly pushed and was now annoyed.

The other black giants that had been attacked nearby reacted similarly. Some that were better protected hadn’t even taken any damage.

Seeing this, no one in the bridge spoke anymore.

Every tentacle tree realized one thing.

Suicidal ramming was already their strongest attack method available.

And even such attacks… could only inflict minor superficial damage on the enemy.

As for conventional firepower?

It couldn’t even leave a scratch.

The fleet commander watched silently. The light in his eight crystal eyes dimmed bit by bit.

Behind him, a young tentacle tree responsible for communications slowly covered its crystal eyes with a tentacle, its treetop trembling uncontrollably. Despair was spreading across the bridge.

The battle in the void continued.

Yet the outcome had already been decided long before the fighting began.

The main force of the black giant legion hadn’t even fully entered the battlefield yet. What had charged in was merely a portion of the vanguard. Yet just the few dozen sixth-rank black giants at the very front had already completely crushed the entire border fleet.

At this point, the black giants were no longer in a hurry to advance.

They began rearranging their formation below the fissure, building defensive lines, and waiting for the subsequent hundred-billion-strong legion to fully enter the battlefield.

In this moment of extreme disadvantage, the fleet commander suddenly raised his head slowly.

His gaze passed over the fleet that was being systematically annihilated and looked toward the depths of the universe behind them.

The border forces’ final defensive system had finished charging.

Seconds ago, he had received the last communication from rear command: “Charging complete. Prepare to guide attack coordinates.”

The light in his crystal eyes reignited, filled with firm resolve.

“All forces…”

He slammed down the order with such force that spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the control surface.

“All warships still capable of movement, activate spatial jump engines! Sync coordinates with the flagship!”

“Guide the ultimate weapon’s attack… here!!”

The bridge fell silent for a brief moment.

Then, all operators began executing the orders like madmen.

Every ship forcibly activated its spatial jump engines and synchronized its coordinates with the flagship.

In the next instant, a light pillar over a hundred meters in diameter descended with a thunderous roar from the depths of the cosmos!

Although the transmission had succeeded, the ultimate weapon’s energy intensity had completely distorted the surrounding space along the way.

Around the light pillar, space rippled violently like water.

Any warship struck by the spatial ripples instantly turned into powder.

The flagship took the brunt of it.

The commander on the bridge didn’t even have time to issue another order before the entire flagship began disintegrating at the molecular level the instant the light pillar arrived. The whole warship turned into a rolling plasma cloud, then was swept along by the light pillar as it continued hurtling toward the plane fissure!

Along the way, several other warships were casually swallowed as well.

They didn’t even have time to produce explosion flashes before being completely submerged in the light pillar.

At this moment, the entire void lit up as bright as day. Elemental turbulence was stirred into massive vortices by the light pillar’s aftershocks.

At the plane fissure, Molten Mountain—who had replaced the Nest as the first line of defense and stood guard in front of the fissure—slowly raised his head.

A destructive torrent over a hundred meters in diameter, carrying enough energy to destroy a planet, came blasting straight at him. The surrounding cosmic space emitted unbearable creaking sounds.

Molten Mountain’s chest maw opened wide.

“ROAR!!!”

With a silent roar, he charged head-on toward the planet-destroying light pillar!

In the next instant, the light pillar slammed viciously into his chest.

In the distance, Jie Ming—who was stabilizing the final stressed nodes of the plane fissure—paused slightly.

His brow vertical eye turned toward the battlefield. The rapidly expanding giant sphere of light was reflected in his pupils.

BOOM!!!

The energy detonated completely.

The impact aftershock turned into visible ring-shaped shockwaves that swept across tens of thousands of kilometers.

Large amounts of warship wreckage were sent flying.

Even the distant black giant legion had to raise defensive shields to withstand the aftershocks.

Jie Ming raised an eyebrow slightly.

“Seventh-rank attack?”

He quickly made his assessment.

The power of this planet-destroying cannon had indeed reached the standard seventh-rank level.

The so-called standard seventh-rank referred to power capable of destroying an ordinary planet.

But… it was only ordinary seventh-rank.

This attack was indeed very strong and had reached standard planet-destroying level.

Yet it was merely capable of using raw violent energy to overcome a planet’s gravitational binding energy and shatter the entire world.

This standard was already quite remarkable for ordinary beings, but for wizards, it was still far from enough!

Under normal circumstances, an average seventh-rank wizard’s attack could also only achieve planet destruction.

But there were differences even between planet-destroying attacks.

Not to mention the vast differences in volume and mass between planets themselves, what wizards meant by “planet destruction” generally referred to directly annihilating and evaporating most of a planet’s matter.

Of course, some seventh-rank wizards were “not skilled” at destruction.

But they could still completely alter the material composition of an entire planet, or directly shrink the whole world down to the size of a marble, among other feats.

In short, the seventh-rank concept in the eyes of wizards meant being able to influence the vast majority of matter and elements on an entire planet. While the destructive force might not sound much different from ordinary seventh-rank attacks, the energy level differed by several orders of magnitude.

As for black giants…

The base material for black giants was lava giants, and lava giants were among the rare powerful creatures that made wizards feel some strain when fighting above their rank.

Black giants, created by layering the modifications of their old enemy, the snow monsters, on top of lava giants—their strength could be imagined.

They might not be as versatile as wizards of the same rank, but their defensive and survivability capabilities were among the top-tier monsters at their level.

It was no exaggeration to say that sixth-rank black giants, with sufficient numbers, could defeat wizards of the same rank!

Therefore, the result of this strike had been decided from the beginning.

The light sphere slowly dissipated. Molten Mountain still stood in place.

Not even a single scratch had been left on the flowing black metal covering his body.

He raised a massive hand and casually wiped his chest, scattering the residual energy embers.

Then, a low grunt sounded from the vertical maw in his chest.

This strike hadn’t even truly broken through his core energy-absorption talent.

At that moment, the space around the plane fissure suddenly began rippling layer after layer.

Countless ripples spread and intersected in the void.

These were spatial ripples produced by a large-scale fleet performing spatial jumps. Every ripple represented a large warship exiting its transition state.

Thanks to the delaying action of the vanguard legion, the main fleet of the tentacle tree civilization had finally arrived.

Jie Ming glanced at the continuously spreading jump ripples, then secured the final stressed nodes of the plane barrier.

The Dual Dharma Manifestation slowly retracted.

The five-hundred-kilometer-tall golden phantom turned into a tide of dark-gold light and collapsed back into the thousand-meter true body.

Afterward, even the true body reverted to its original human form.

He stepped out of the fissure and entered the outer space of the tentacle tree civilization’s homeworld.

The plane where the tentacle tree civilization resided was a rare cosmic-type plane.

Therefore, the moment Jie Ming entered, he was met with cosmic vacuum—completely unsuitable for carbon-based life.

To Jie Ming, however, it was no different from walking into a laboratory with slightly lower temperature.

The jump ripples in the surrounding space continued to spread. He could clearly sense every subtle vibration in the spatial structure.

This was the distinctive signal of a large number of high-tonnage warships jumping simultaneously.

The scale of the main fleet was at least two orders of magnitude larger than the border fleet.

“It seems this civilization still lacks experience. Jumping over so openly—if the opponent had sufficient technology, they could have completely intercepted the spatial jump.”

Jie Ming shook his head, withdrew his perception, and made no move to intercept the enemy’s spatial jump. Instead, he looked toward Molten Mountain beside him.

“The enemy’s main fleet has finally arrived. First, completely shatter their resistance and display our power.”

“Yes! Master!”