Chapter 497: Chain Firecrackers, Scorching Metal Rain! Terror Spreads!
Just when the people on Earth thought that only the Mantis had been destroyed and that the other battleships remained unharmed, a violent explosion suddenly erupted in a corner of the United Fleet.
Flames spread outward in all directions like a wildfire racing through a steel jungle. Everyone was stunned, dumbfounded by the sudden calamity.
"What's going on? How could there suddenly be an explosion? Where's the Droplet—where did it go?!"
Those watching the live broadcast had no idea what had happened. The first star-class warship suddenly burst into flames, erupting into an explosion that unleashed shockwaves across space.
The detonation of its nuclear reactor triggered a thermonuclear chain reaction. Inside the hull, a fiery ball of fusion fire ignited, swelling and spreading rapidly.
The clustered fleet was illuminated by the blinding flash. In the vast, silent darkness of space, the human warships looked like firecrackers being lit one after another.
It turned out that the Droplet—which had been motionless and seemingly harmless just moments before—had suddenly shot out of the Mantis at third cosmic velocity, darting straight into the fleet formation.
Its method of attack was extremely simple, even crude: ramming.
Traveling at 17 kilometers per second, it smashed directly into the fuel bays of the warships, igniting catastrophic chain reactions. The first to suffer was the Infinite Frontier, which became a blazing fireball. The resulting shockwave shredded nearby ships into wreckage.
The United Fleet's own "clever" tactic of maintaining ultra-close spacing now became the fuse for disaster. Every time the Droplet executed a physically impossible sharp turn to ram a fuel bay, an entire swath of the fleet erupted into a firestorm in space.
Before anyone could react, an entire row of star-class warships detonated one by one, each fireball following the last at intervals of less than a second.
The fusion blasts, the shockwaves, the collisions of shattered debris—
All of these compounded into chaos. A thousand blazing suns flared like chained firecrackers, exploding in rapid succession, colliding, and vanishing.
The humans watching the live broadcast were frozen in disbelief.
They still couldn't grasp what was happening. If this was an enemy attack, then why couldn't they see the attacker? To them, the explosions seemed to be appearing out of thin air.
At this moment, everyone was plunged into trembling terror. In the past two hundred years of simulations and strategic planning, humanity had imagined countless extreme wartime scenarios.
But to witness over a hundred warships explode like firecrackers within a single minute—this was beyond anything their minds could bear.
For a moment, some even believed a force far stronger than the Trisolarans or humanity itself had appeared—some mysterious "third party" wielding invisible magic to annihilate their fleet.
But soon, sharp-eyed viewers spotted the culprit in full view, and someone cried out:
"It's the Droplet! The Droplet is attacking!"
Even after knowing the truth, people could not comprehend it. How could something only three meters in size cause such horrific, efficient destruction in so little time?
This wasn't technology—it was sorcery!
At this point, the terrified fleet scrambled to analyze the battlefield data. Running countless images through their systems, they finally tracked the Droplet's movements.
The software showed that aside from a blazing high-temperature halo of exhaust at its rear, the Droplet's appearance was unchanged.
Its streamlined shape was still flawless, its impossibly smooth surface reflecting the fiery glow of fusion fireballs and molten metal.
The alternating flashes of blinding white and molten red made it look like a burning drop of blood.
Everyone finally understood: the Droplet was no envoy—it was their executioner.
Seeing this, the supreme commanders of the North American and European fleets gave the order at once:
"All attack units, lock onto the Droplet—fire!"
Instantly, every star-class warship activated its intercept systems. Electromagnetic railguns unleashed a storm of metallic shells at the oncoming Droplet.
Each shell carried immense destructive power, their tremendous kinetic energy making every impact equivalent to a super-heavy bomb.
The guns spat out hundreds of these basketball-sized shells every second, each flying at 80 kilometers per second—more than enough to raze a mountain on Earth in minutes.
Yet when these shells struck the Droplet, all they produced were faint sparks before shattering to dust.
The Droplet remained utterly unscathed. Its speed never faltered, its surface never dented—perfectly smooth as if nothing had touched it.
Even under an ultra-high-magnification microscope, its mirror-like surface would show not a single scratch.
The Droplet maintained full velocity, charging through the fleet, tearing apart warship after warship while shrugging off the railgun barrage.
"That's strong-interaction material…"
Some crew aboard the Endless-class carrier recognized its nature. Materials like this weren't exactly rare within the Universal Megacorp; in fact, they were relatively common.
The Universal Megacorp's elite warships used neutron armor plating, which was itself a form of strong-interaction material—though still nowhere near the Droplet's degree of resilience.
The gulf between such matter and ordinary matter was like the difference between solids and liquids.
To pit star-class railgun shells against the Droplet wasn't even "egg against stone." It was like spraying water with a toy squirt gun. The disparity in material state was far too great. Humanity simply had no means of destroying the Droplet with conventional matter.
Grinding an iron pillar into a needle was achievable, but breaking the Droplet? Impossible.
The Droplet roamed freely among the United Fleet, darting left and right, unstoppable in its slaughter.
With railguns useless, the desperate fleet resorted to laser weapons.
But that was an even more foolish choice—one they would pay for themselves.
As the beams struck the Droplet, its surface blazed with dazzling brilliance, brighter even than the surrounding nuclear fireballs.
Then, the perfectly smooth surface reflected the beams in all directions, scattering them unpredictably into the depths of space—though some inevitably fell upon their own fleet.
Unlucky star-class warships were struck by their allies' lasers, molten holes tearing open their decks. Crew members were sucked into space, suffocating to death.
Blazing with a light that seemed to devour all, the Droplet smashed through the United Fleet's second formation. Everyone watched this tragedy unfold, helpless to stop it.
For two centuries, human strategists had imagined grand battles—vast fleets clashing, fortress-ships the size of cities grinding civilizations into dust, apocalyptic weapons saturating the battlefield.
But the Droplet shattered all such visions.
And in all their scenarios, the worst the Trisolarans were expected to wield were anti-matter weapons.
Just a single grain-sized piece of antimatter, no larger than a peanut, would be enough to destroy a stellar-class battleship.
The Trisolaran fleet's engines already ran on antimatter, so humanity's assumption that they also wielded antimatter weapons was only natural.
Yet now, the weapon driving the United Fleet into absolute despair was nothing more than a Trisolaran probe. That "droplet" was but a single speck of their vast ocean of power—utterly insignificant compared to the whole.
And still, this one drop, relying only on crude, primitive ramming, shattered the United Fleet into pieces.
Every impact of the droplet targeted the fusion reaction chambers of the battleships. The blazing corona trailing its tail acted like a spark igniting a powder keg, setting off explosions on contact.
The battleships, lined up in straight formation, became a burning fuse. One after another they erupted in flames, leaving behind a two-thousand-kilometer trail of ashen wreckage glowing with a dim crimson afterlight.
Hull after hull melted down completely, liquefied into millions of tons of molten metal, glowing red as it sprayed outward in every direction. A rain of fiery shards scattered unchecked in the vacuum of space.
This torrential downpour of molten metal surged like waves in the silence of the void. Even ships untouched by the droplet itself could not escape being battered by burning wreckage.
The United Fleet's command system collapsed entirely into paralysis. They had already tried every conceivable method of attack against the droplet—yet every attempt had proven utterly useless.
They were like prisoners, hands and feet bound, forced into a death queue—waiting helplessly for the droplet-bullet to pierce through their skulls.
Every warship struck by the droplet first turned incandescent red. After three seconds it overheated and detonated, its fusion fuel unleashing fireballs of nuclear flame that devoured everything nearby.
All life aboard was vaporized in an instant.
Apart from the torment of knowing death was coming, the crew suffered no physical pain—misery wrapped in a final, fleeting mercy.
"The droplet's internal targeting system is frighteningly precise and efficient. Every strike goes straight for the ships' fuel cores. It's a graceful, exquisite killer."
V could not help but marvel. While human arrogance and foolishness had their part in this one-sided massacre, the far greater factor was the yawning gulf of technology between the two civilizations.
The Universal Megacorp's neutron erasers, MD-500 "Little Doctor," and gravity-distortion weapons carried their own kind of elegance. Even so, V couldn't deny admiration for the Trisolarans' clean and merciless artistry.
On this battlefield, any ship struck directly by the droplet could be called lucky.
For those left to endure the rain of molten wreckage and debris, or dragged into space by decompression, death came in countless brutal forms.
Some were roasted alive under molten downpours.
Some suffocated, drifting helpless in the void.
Some were crushed into pulp by falling debris.
Some convulsed to death as heart failure struck from sheer terror.
Yet none of these deaths would be noticed.
Because out there, a hundred-thousand-kilometer cloud of blazing debris—condensed from explosions and molten wreckage—flared against the fireballs of fusion. Together, they painted a magnificent cosmic tableau.
So dazzling, so breathtakingly beautiful—it was almost intoxicating to behold.
Like a crimson sunset, as red as rouge brushed across a young girl's cheeks.
But make no mistake—this was a massacre, through and through. Throughout it all, the United Fleet never mounted a single effective counterattack.
They hadn't even managed an organized retreat.
Their cramped battle formation left no room to turn. And those on the outermost edge were always the droplet's first targets.
No one could flee this killing ground. They could only watch, helpless, as death crept ever closer.
When the final stellar-class battleship ignited into a blazing fireball, both the North American and European fleets were utterly annihilated.
Space is silent. Explosions, cries of agony, shouts of rage—every sound of despair erupted in uncanny stillness.
Chains of destruction stretched for tens of thousands of kilometers, woven from burning wreckage. With its mastery of strong-interaction materials, propellantless thrust, and hyperdimensional computation, the droplet had shredded Fleet International's pride without mercy.
The live broadcast abruptly cut to static. Wreckage floated. Cries of despair rang hollow.
And all of it had already happened—three hours ago.
This battle for doomsday had long since ended. What humanity saw now was nothing more than a delayed playback of death.
On Earth, silence fell. People heard only the thundering beat of their own hearts. Terror had not yet fully consumed them—because they still refused to believe.
Better to think they were dreaming, than to accept that Fleet International had been wiped out to the last ship.
Until a man suddenly hurled himself from a rooftop—splatting into gore and shredded flesh. Women screamed.
Then reality struck, merciless and raw.
The beautiful dream dissolved, leaving only blood-drenched truth.
The Doomsday Battle was over. Humanity had not climbed from despair into new hope—only descended into the true end of civilization.
"Ahhhhhh—!!"
Shrill screams of terror rippled outward. The world erupted into chaos. In a blink, civilization and order shattered, people tearing into each other like beasts, reverting in an instant to some primitive age of savagery.
Meanwhile, the battlefield above fell into utter stillness. The radiant debris clouds cooled, their glow fading, swallowed into darkness.
Solar gravity would stretch them out into a long, thin metallic band. In years to come, the cloud would scatter into an almost invisible veil of dust, orbiting the sun alongside the restless souls of the millions who could not find peace.
A mere three-meter-long droplet had, in under an hour, reduced humanity's grand fleet to nothing more than a pathetic "ring of metal ghosts."
And that droplet was just a single Trisolaran probe. Nine more were still en route, scheduled to arrive in the solar system within three years.
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