Starting with God's perspective, how to lose an interstellar war?

A low hum filled the bridge.

That was the sound of the main gun's capacitor array starting to charge, like the low growl of a giant beast before it awakens.

Looking out the observation window, the huge particle acceleration rings on both sides of the bow of the Kunlunshan began to light up with a blue-white light, which grew brighter and brighter, becoming increasingly dazzling.

The energy readings on the control panel skyrocketed: 30%...50%...70%...

at the same time.

On the Salamander, two million kilometers away.

The entire bridge was illuminated with a striking red light.

And it was accompanied by a piercing alarm sound.

"Beep beep beep... Multi-band fire control scan detected... Locked on... Emergency evasive action..."

"Beep beep beep... High energy warning..."

Commander Victor of the Dragon Lizard Fleet jumped up from his chair.

"How is that possible? Do Federation starships even have main guns with a range exceeding 1.5 million?"

At this moment, he dared not gamble that the opposing artillery chief had lost his mind and accidentally triggered the trigger.

After all, a starship's main gun can only fire four or five times in a single battle.

No commander would be so foolish as to waste a launch opportunity.

"Activate energy shield!"

"Avoid it immediately!"

"Victor shouted."

Inside the Kunlun Mountain.

"Enemy ships have spotted us charging!"

Sensor supervisor report.

"The Salamander is urgently activating its shield generator, but their system is too old; it will take at least fifteen seconds to activate—"

"Charging complete: 95%"

The artillery chief's voice remained steady.

"Enemy ship shield activation progress: 40%...45%..."

98%.

"Shield at 60%! They're still accelerating its activation!"

99%.

Aiming and correction complete.

Qin Beiwang shouted.

"emission!"

Through the observation window, he could see the outline of the Imperial battleship in the distance.

A gray shadow struggles in the darkness, with a faint blue glow rising around the ship as the shields are activated.

too slow.

With his command.

In that instant, the entire bridge was engulfed by a blinding white light.

It wasn't one beam of light, it was two.

The two main guns at the bow of the Kunlunshan fired simultaneously, and two streams of particles, each more than fifteen meters in diameter, tore through the void for 200 million kilometers like a giant sword in mythology that cut through chaos.

No sound – sound cannot travel in space.

But at that moment, everyone seemed to hear a roar that transcended the laws of physics; it was an auditory hallucination produced in consciousness when energy reached its peak.

The beam of light traveled a straight line, and the space it passed through was slightly distorted due to the energy overload.

Interstellar dust that happened to drift by along the way was completely ionized the moment it came into contact with the edge of the beam, bursting out with a brief but brilliant purple halo.

Three tenths of a second later, the beam hit the target.

The Salamander's shields reached a 72% activation rate upon impact.

This should have been able to withstand the intensity of several salvos from a conventional main gun.

But against the "Kaitian" class main gun, this shield is as fragile as a soap bubble.

The shield overloads within the first millisecond of contact.

In the second millisecond, the beam pierced through the bow armor.

In the third millisecond, energy surged into the ship's interior, flowing upstream along the main energy pipeline, affecting everything in its path.

Alloy armor, weapon systems, reactor shells, and hundreds of Fury Empire soldiers—instantly vaporized in temperatures exceeding billions of degrees.

Then, the reactor reaches criticality.

The entire battlecruiser lit up from the inside, like a lantern being lit.

The light first shone through the cracks, then grew brighter and brighter until the ship could no longer contain the raging energy.

An explosion occurred.

It was not an explosion in the conventional sense, but a celebration of matter being transformed into pure energy.

The entire 3-kilometer-long starship transformed into a blazing white sphere with a diameter of over 50 kilometers in less than a second.

The core temperature of the photon sphere exceeded that of the star's surface, and the shockwaves that spread out from its edges blew several nearby destroyers that had no time to dodge away like falling leaves.

The light lasted for three seconds before gradually dimming.

When visibility returned, the Salamander was back in its original location.

All that remained was a spreading cloud of metallic vapor and countless tiny, still-burning fragments.

Inside the bridge, there was a deathly silence.

Everyone stared at the graveyard of light that had just been born and was quickly dying, forgetting to breathe and forgetting to blink.

Zhuang Zhixuan slowly turned her head to look at Qin Beiwang.

The young commander calmly walked away from the control panel, as if it had just been a routine training firing exercise.

"Target destroyed."

He announced this, his voice devoid of any emotion.

"All ships, continue pressing forward."

But don't delve too deeply!

The orb of light from the Salamander's explosion left an overexposed afterimage on the Imperial fleet's sensor screens for ten seconds.

As the light finally dimmed, only the faint hum of the instruments and the suppressed breathing of the twenty-odd officers remained on the bridge of the Imperial Glory.

Remington Wales stood motionless in front of the tactical screen.

His eyes were fixed on the spreading cloud of metallic vapor, the afterglow of the lingering sunlight reflected deep within his pupils.

Two million kilometers.

He remembered that number.

Sensor records show that when the Kunlunshan fired, the actual distance between it and the Salamander was 2 million and 3,000 kilometers.

At this distance, the main guns of the Imperial Glory battleship would have a hit rate of no more than 15%.

Even if it hits, its power will be reduced to less than one-third.

But those two beams of particle energy, traversing two million kilometers of void, did not lose any power.

They pierced through the Salamander's 72% strength shields like butter, then vaporized the 3-kilometer-long battleship from bow to stern.

This is not the firepower that a typical star system fleet should have.

Wells' fingers unconsciously tightened around the armrests of the conductor's chair.

A chilling conjecture, like a venomous snake, burrowed into his mind.

"Starfield-level core fleet".

He uttered the word in a low voice.

The officers on the bridge all turned to look at him, their faces filled with confusion and fear.

"commander?"

The adjutant's voice trembled.

"That's no ordinary T5-class battleship."

Wells' voice was dry, like sandpaper being rubbed.

"The maximum effective range of the main gun of a regular T5 class will not exceed 1.8 million kilometers."

Moreover, its power... could never possibly penetrate the full-power shields of a T3.5-class battleship from two million kilometers away with a single shot.

He accessed the Federation Fleet's organizational database and quickly flipped to the classified section.

Most of the items labeled "Exclusive Equipment for Starfield-level Core Fleets" only have names and vague descriptions, without specific parameters.

But there was one piece of information he remembered very clearly.

"Heaven-Opening Class Heavy Particle Beam Main Cannon"

Wells pronounced the name with each syllable heavy as a mountain.

"The Federal Academy of Sciences completed its research and development three years ago, and it is only equipped to the main flagships of the core fleets of the three major star regions: the Galaxy Star Region, the Wanshi Star Region, and the Newman Star Region."

Theoretical maximum range: 2.4 million kilometers.

Theoretically, a single shot's yield is equivalent to the directed energy release of a 500-kiloton tactical nuclear warhead.