Thirteen minutes remained before the arrival of the Ghosts. Within this time, Hawke nervously exchanged some information with the commander of the Lucca fleet about each other, as well as some key points for fighting the Ghost Race.
To put it simply, there was only one way to destroy the Ghost Race, and that was to strike with constant firepower, continuously wearing down the Ghost Race's radiation intensity and slowly grinding it to death. This pattern is common to both Level 2 and Level 6 civilisations, except that the firepower of the senior civilisation is a little more powerful and takes less time to destroy the Ghost Race of the same level.
For the sake of fairness, there was no such thing as who was the main attacker and who was the main defender, instead, the two sides shared equally between the left and right sides, each responsible for their own side's attack and defence.
"Attention, only two light minutes left, high-powered laser cannons, start firing!" At this point, Hawke received a signal from the commander of Lucca's fleet.
"Good!" Hawk agreed and immediately manipulated the 200,000 laser cannons on top of the ship and started firing forward. At the same time, the Lucca civilization also had up to 100,000 laser cannons to start firing.
The average strength of these 100,000 laser cannons was much higher than that of Hawk's, which led to the fact that although their number was not as high as Hawk's, their total attack power was much higher than Hawk's.
Hawke secretly recorded the power, number and other parameters of the Luca fleet's laser cannons. Hawke knew that the other side must be recording their own ship parameters as well. But Hawke did not care.
Because there were no over-the-horizon communication satellites, the only way to find out the location of the Ghosts was through the ghost detectors. Hawke saw that the intensity of the ghosts on the ghost detector was slowly decreasing.
The drop was extremely slow, and if they kept firing at their current intensity, by the time the Ghosts got close, their total energy intensity was expected to drop by about three percentage points.
"The laser cannon won't work! Fire the energy cannonballs!" Hawke sent out a message.
"Good! Energy cannons fire in unison!" The Lucca fleet commander quickly replied.
By this time, the distance between the Ghosts and the fleet was only thirty light seconds, or roughly nine million kilometres.
A total of 180,000 ships each unleashed their own energy cannon attacks. Immediately, countless energy cannonballs emitting an ethereal blue glow rushed forward at sublight speed, and then, exploded violently in the void.
Hawk detected that the intensity of the Ghost Race, had dropped by another five percentage points.
There were only twenty seconds left until the convergence time.
Hawke was about to launch a second flurry of energy cannon fire when, at this critical moment, Hawke snapped, and had another strange feeling.
"The force field generator! Lucan civilisation! What are you doing?! Quickly turn this thing off!" Hawke roared.
That's right, Hawk detected that the Lucan civilization, which was right beside him, had turned on the Force Field Generator again, which Hawk hated so much.
Previously, after the two sides had agreed to cooperate, the Lucca civilisation had turned off the force field generator. Naturally, it was to avoid affecting Hawk's battle power, but for some unknown reason, they actually turned the force field generator on again at this time. Immediately, Hawk's ship's maneuverability was severely restricted, and its battle power plummeted.
"Haha! Damn mechanical civilization! You'll act as cannon fodder! I'll retreat a bit first!" Over the communication channel, came the cocky laughter of the commander of the Lucca ship.
Hawk immediately understood that he had been tricked by the other side.
"Master, you've been fooled." Somehow, Lucca II had woken up leisurely, and it perceived the whole thing.
"Nonsense! I know I've been fooled! But why would they dare to do that? To just lose me in combat, do they, themselves, really have the confidence to defeat the Ghosts?" Hawke roared.
"No. Even the Spectres possess certain instincts. Between a long-range target and a close-range target, they will naturally choose the close-range target, which means that after the Luka fleet retreats, you will be attacked by the Ghosts first. And after being attacked, you will naturally resist, which will stall the Ghosts for a while, which will buy the Luca fleet valuable time to attack ..." Luca II said sharply.
"Damn it!" Hawk cursed viciously, "I can't let you get away with this even if I have to die! Energy cannon! Fire!"
Hawke gave the order to fire. The difference was that this time, the target of the launch was not the Ghost Race, but the Lucca fleet that had retreated some distance.
"It's no use, gravity bombs! Fire!" The commander of the Lucca fleet roared wildly.
Gravity bombs, a level four civilization creation, were weapons of the same technological level as force field generators. The gravity bomb, as one could imagine, would definitely possess an extremely great power.
At this moment, there were only less than five seconds left before the Hawk Fleet and the Ghost Race rendezvoused.
The moment Hawke's fleet and the Ghosts converged, the Gravity Bomb would arrive just in time, and then it would explode with a bang, dealing a double blow to the Ghosts and Hawke's fleet.
"What a vicious move, what a strong determination!" Hawke looked at the Lucca fleet with dead eyes, his mind spinning rapidly, but, Hawke could not think of any way to deal with it.
"A level four civilization has mastered proton-neutron level matter decay technology and has mastered FTL navigation, but the most important point is that a level four civilization has unified the four basic forces of strong force, weak force, electromagnetic force, and gravity, so the weapons of a level four civilization are all kinds of force field weapons! Gravity bombs are among them, and at the moment of explosion, a huge amount of energy will be transformed into gravitational waves that will deal a devastating blow to all matter within hundreds of kilometres around! It is indefensible! I carry tens of thousands of such weapons! Bloody mechanical civilisation, you don't stand a chance! I will kill both the Ghosts and you!" In that instant, all through Hawk's communication channel was the cocky laughter of the Lucan fleet commander.
"Have the four fundamental forces been united ..." Hawke froze in a flash.
Gravitational force, electromagnetic force, strong interaction force, and weak interaction force were known as the four fundamental forces. In previous scientific research, mankind has unified the three basic forces, electromagnetic force, strong interaction force and weak interaction force, confirming that they are different manifestations of the same force, but mankind has never been able to unify the gravitational force as well.
Mankind had launched a protracted research for this purpose, and even the theory that could unify the four fundamental forces was given the name of Grand Unified Theory, whose importance could be imagined, but the Grand Unified Theory, Hawke had not worked out until now.
Now, Hawke knew that the Grand Unified Theory, was a field that only a level four civilization could touch. And the Force Field Generator, the Gravity Bomb, both of these weapons, were born under the framework of the Grand Unified Theory.
After mastering the Grand Unified Theory, it is possible to convert energy between the four forces, the same fusion energy, Hawk can only make energy cannonballs, while a level four civilisation can convert this energy into gravitational force and make gravitational cannonballs.
This is the technological leap brought about by the advancement of basic theory.
"Could it be that I'm really going to be shaded to death by them here today?" A bit of despair flashed through Hawk's heart.
The moment the gravity bombs arrived, Hawke's energy cannonball attack had also reached the middle of the Luca fleet. But in his haste, Hawke's attack was not powerful, and with a round of flak, it only took out a dozen or so Lucca ships. The gravity bombs rushed into the Hawke fleet at a very high speed and then, in an instant, exploded.
The moment the gravity bomb exploded, Hawke detected an indescribable gravitational fluctuation. In the centre of the explosion point, a massive star seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, a star that exerted an acceleration of at least one kilometre per second on all matter within hundreds of kilometres around it.
Moreover, because the gravitational force on the end of the ship near the explosion point was different from that on the end far from the explosion point, under this gravitational gap, the ship's hull began to be stretched and lengthened, and then torn apart, and Hawk saw that one of the village ships, pulled by this violent burst of gravitational waves, turned into a long strip and quickly fell into the explosion point.
Hawke knew that this force that pulled the ship into long strips was called tidal force. Any ship that was within the limits of the blast point, Losch, would be pulled and torn apart by the tidal force.
Hawke's shields were ineffective against the gravitational force. Hawke could only watch as over 10,000 ships were buried under this one gravity bomb.
Under the force field of the force field generator, Hawke's ships' manoeuvrability was greatly reduced and they could not spread out quickly. Because of the inability to spread out, the gravity bomb exploded with the most destructive power.
At the moment the gravity bomb exploded, Hawke detected that the Ghosts had also arrived at his fleet. This gravity bomb reduced the overall radiation intensity of the Ghost Race by 0.5 percentage points.
A round of energy cannon fire from 180,000 ships had reduced the overall intensity of the Ghost Race by five percentage points, and a single gravity bomb had reduced the overall radiation intensity of the Ghost Race by 0.5 percentage points.
The mighty power of the gravity bomb had shocked Hawk's heart.
"The ghosts are already here. ... They are thousands and thousands of times stronger than the Jupiter spirits, and I have no chance of fighting them. Hey ..." Hawke sighed and gave up any action of resistance.
However, the next moment, Hawke saw another phenomenon that shocked him even more.
This group of ghosts, after reaching Hawke's fleet, actually did not make any stop, but directly crossed over Hawke's fleet and continued to rush towards the front.
Up ahead, it was the Lucca civilization fleet!