The Naval Base of the Unnamed Ship Girls

"Captain, we can't get in touch with them!" the communications officer, who had been trying to contact the player who had broken into the challenge room, said to his captain.

"Has the other side enabled communication jamming?" the captain asked, somewhat puzzled.

"It's not communication jamming, but... um..." The communications officer hesitated for a moment, seemingly having noticed something strange.

"And what?" Because the admiral temporarily assigned the Tanuki Group to patrol the sea area, the captain of the fleet whose scheduled match was delayed was very unhappy. Even if they won this round, they would still be criticized by the ship girls on the other side.

"The other party...the other party has not completed the novice missions yet, so communication cannot be established," the communicator said, confirming that he was not mistaken.

"Huh? Are you kidding me? How did you join a custom room without completing the newbie quests?" Upon hearing what the communications officer said, the captain quickly climbed into the carriage and started pressing buttons on the communications officer's communicator.

"He really is a newbie who hasn't even completed the beginner's quests." After adjusting the communicator several times, the captain finally confirmed that his communications officer wasn't joking with him.

"Why is that?" The captain fell into deep thought.

"Is there a bug in the game itself?" the reporter suggested.

"Hmm, very likely. After all, ever since this game company released this virtual pod in the Thunder series of games, there have been frequent bugs." The captain, deep in thought, agreed with the communications officer's opinion.

"So what should we do now? Should we turn off the live stream?" the vice-captain on another tank asked the battalion commander.

"...Are we going to make those viewers wait for more than half an hour before telling them that the competition has been postponed due to an accident?" The captain did not agree with the vice captain's suggestion: "If that happens, our garrison team's live stream will be flooded with trashy fish balls."

"So what should we do with this car?" The vice-captain pointed at the CV33, which was still moving back and forth and left and right like someone with ADHD.

"Is friendly fire activated?" After thinking for a while, the captain asked over the communicator.

"Everything is set up according to the official competition, so it's open." The voice coming from the communicator came from outside the game.

“In that case, Lei, take this CV33 home. I’ll apologize to them after the game is over,” the captain said to his vice-captain, Lei, having made up his mind.

“Yes, sir Z1. But do we really have to use 19 tanks to fight 20?” Vice Captain Lei asked Captain Z1.

"I believe in everyone's abilities. Even if we lose, I will submit a challenge application for the next time," Captain Z1 said to all his teammates over the communicator.

"No problem!" "Watch my anti-tank gun!" "It's just one more tank!" "Z1 is the best!"

A variety of voices came through the communicator, from innocent elementary school students to mature and composed older sisters. In the game world, they all respected their Z1 squadron leader, even though she was just a destroyer ship girl.

"Hey, Adun, something feels off?" Hyperion, who was constantly driving the CV33 back and forth, suddenly felt a chill down his spine.

"Oh, a tank is targeting us?" Adun said, already looking out from the rear observation port of the CV33 before Hyperion could say that something was wrong.

"Huh? Where are the enemies? Where? I can't see them. Tsk, this observation port is too small!" Hyperion complained about the long and narrow observation port of the CV33 tank's driver's seat.

“Behind us,” Ardon said, turning around. “I think you can speed up now.”

"Our own people?" The Hyperion, which had slammed on the accelerator and made the CV33 bounce on the ground as it sped off, heard the sound of a shell hitting the ground behind it.

“They weren’t on our side from the moment they opened fire,” Ardon said.

"Why can't you hit it even at such close range?" Captain Z1 asked Lei, watching the CV33 speed away.

"I'm very sorry, the gunner misjudged the CV33's maneuverability!" Vice Captain Lei leaned out of the tank and bowed deeply.

"Okay, hey, contact the other side and have them send a vehicle to take out this CV33. We'll officially start after that." Z1 felt that chasing a friendly CV33 seemed a bit inappropriate, so he spoke into the communicator.

"Wait a moment..." The substitute ship girl outside the game paused for a moment on the communicator and said, "The other side said that it has been arranged, and they have agreed to directly engage in a 19 vs 19 battle after dealing with that CV33."

"That's good." Z1 said upon hearing the voice on the communicator: "All squads, stop the engines and enter rest period."

"What about the live stream?" Lei asked Z1 with some concern. Should the viewers who were planning to watch the game just watch everyone taking a break?

“I’ll have the live stream screen track that CV33, understand?” Z1 said into the communicator.

"Received, the screen has been switched."

------------------

I had so much fun watching the Girls und Panzer movie that I wrote this little side story about Kantai Collection... No worries, there will be Kantai Collection and Airplanes, and Kantai Collection and Battleships later.

By the way, E7, go to hell.

Chapter 225 A Fair Showdown Between 59 and 33

"A cowboy-style one-on-one duel? I like it!" When the Hyperion, piloting the CV33, saw that only one tank was coming from the opposite direction and its teammates were no longer sniping at it, the star cruiser knew what the current situation was.

"Cowboy style?" As a Protoss Ark civilization without cowboys, Adun had no idea what the Hyperion was talking about.

“Fair! Just! A perfect one-on-one fight!” Hyperion said, pulling the gear lever a few times.

“Fair? Just?” Adun was a little skeptical that Hyperion’s power supply system might be overheating.

"Is something wrong? On this battlefield, it's just her and me." It seems Hyperion really enjoys this kind of cowboy duel; his tone has become somewhat strange.

"Uh..." The game menu in front of Adon displayed the opponent's tank information. Normally, after entering the game, you can only know what tank the opponent is using, and you can't access this kind of game database.

Everything depends on the player's familiarity with all the vehicles; however, this setting is useless for the two starship girls who exploited a bug to enter the custom game mode early.

"Why don't I feel this is fair at all?" Adun said with a hint of helplessness after reading the description of the tank opposite him.

"So what if the enemy's armor is a bit thicker and their cannons are a bit bigger? Can the difference be bigger than the difference between you and me?" Hyperion said, not thinking there was anything wrong with it.

It was as if she had become accustomed to this kind of asymmetric warfare.

Ardon considered the various enemies the humans in the Koprulu Sector had encountered, and if he included himself, it seemed that there was nothing wrong with the Hyperion having such an understanding.

Of the original three ships that saved the world, the Spear of Adun, the Protoss's doomsday ark, was the largest. The Zerg Queen of Blades' flagship, the Leviathan, which called itself Izsha, was only the size of the front section of the Spear of Adun, but it was still much larger than the Hyperion, which was only a few hundred meters long.

"Well, although the gap isn't that big, our goal should be to take them out, right?" Without going into further discussion about whether it was fair or not, Adun glanced at the two 8mm machine guns in front of him and said.

"Everything that is manufactured has a weakness. Anyway, with my driving skills, the other side would have to practice for hundreds of years to hit me."

As he spoke, Hyperion maneuvered the CV33 into a series of drifts, not only dodging the shell that had hit its intended path, but also managing to avoid even grazing the bullets fired by the enemy's machine gun.

"Missed it?" The commander of the T54 tank looked at the gunner with a puzzled expression.

"Is that really a tank?" The IJN battleship's gunner said speechlessly as he looked at the CV33 in the scope, which was firing like a Siberian Husky.

"Is this CV33 driver a professional race car driver?" Hood, the tank driver of this squad, looked dumbfounded when he saw the Hyperion's driving skills.

"Change to a different shell?" The American carrier loader, who hadn't seen what happened, only knew that the first shot had missed, picked up a high-explosive shell, the kind that big tanks use to bully small tanks, and asked.

"Do you need me to stop so Nagato can aim more accurately?" Hood, as the driver, also offered his suggestion.

"Stop the car?" The American light cruiser commander was surprised that Hood, a veteran player, would make such a suggestion. Although stopping the car and firing is very stable in Thunder Tank, especially since most players are ship girls who are born to love gunnery, stopping the car and aiming is at least 99% accurate, if not 100%.

However, precisely because both sides are ship girls who are professional gunners, stopping to aim is basically suicide, let alone in professional matches or even in some ordinary players' game rooms.

Therefore, the normal way to play this game is to seize fleeting opportunities to destroy the opponent in constant mobile combat.

"It doesn't matter, the opponent is just a CV33 with two 8mm machine guns. Even if they run out of ammunition, it won't affect us much." Hood reiterated his statement.

"Yes, I also suggest stopping and aiming. With the area-of-effect damage of the explosive shells, I can guarantee that the next shot will hit the enemy." Gunner Nagato said seriously, seemingly provoked by the CV33 showing off its driving skills on the other side.

"Alright, Hood, pretend to chase them first, then stop abruptly when they reach open ground. It's up to you now, Nagato." The light cruiser commander patted the gunner Nagato on the shoulder and said.

"Yes, sir!" both pilot Hood and gunner Nagato replied simultaneously. The American carrier girl, who was also the loader, loaded a high-explosive shell into the T54's 100mm tank gun.

Unlike the two teams who were confident that they would take down the CV33 with the next shell, the teammates at the starting point only felt that their worldview had been shattered by the CV33.

"If you, Z31, were to drive it, could you achieve the same performance as that CV33?" Z1 asked Z31, who was in the driver's seat, after repeating what he had revealed in the communicator to his crew members.

"Z1, are you sure they're not seeing things?" Z31, the driver of the flagship car, asked rhetorically.

"It shouldn't be wrong, right?" Z1's tone was somewhat uncertain, because what had just been said in the communicator was really too terrifying.

“Although I’ve practiced driving a reconnaissance vehicle like the CV33, and I can dodge enemy artillery fire by observing their aiming positions,” Z31 said somewhat hesitantly, “dodging every single machine gun shot… that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

"Impossible?" To be honest, Z1 also found it hard to believe what the reserve team members who had been watching the live stream were saying over the communicator.

“Something’s not right…” As he looked through the observation port behind him at the Soviet tank that was aggressively pursuing him, Adun’s war instincts suddenly kicked in.

"I felt it too," Hyperion, who was piloting the CV33 in alternating Z-shaped and S-shaped trajectories, chimed in.

"The enemy's main gun isn't deliberately aiming at us." Although the gunner of that T54 was moving the turret left and right, it was only moving left and right and wasn't actually following the Hyperion's irregular driving style.

“That means they’re actually just chasing us,” Hyperion said, looking at the road ahead.

“Chasing us? I see. Find a chance to turn around.” Ardon turned around and gripped the handles of the two 8mm machine guns on the CV33.

“Turn around? No problem!” Hyperion, who understood what Adun was going to do, licked his lips and said.

"Huh? They actually dare to come to our doorstep? Nagato, aim at their tracks and fire the machine guns!" The light cruiser commander of the T54 crew said as he saw a CV33 that had fishtailed and turned around, charging aggressively towards them.

"Didn't ask... Huh?" Nagato, who was about to say it was no problem, paused for a moment.

"what happened?"

"The machine gun...it's been shot down!" Nagato said in surprise, still in a daze.

"How could this be!" The American light cruiser commander of the T54 crew felt an increasingly strong sense of unease rising from the bottom of his heart.

☆, Chapter 226 The Accuracy of Starship Girls

"Accurate! Adun, you did a great job!" Hyperion said happily after seeing through the observation port that the two machine guns on the top of the enemy tank, which could barely be considered a threat, had been taken out.

Although she had just dodged the two machine guns of different calibers while driving the reconnaissance vehicle, Hyperion couldn't guarantee she could dodge them perfectly if she got too close.

For the two starship girls piloting the CV33, the main gun and machine gun of the T54 tank were of roughly the same level of threat.

“Such a large target doesn’t even need aiming,” Adun said without even looking at Hyperion.

“I thought you Protoss never learned how to aim,” Hyperion said in a tone that sounded both joking and serious.

"Why?" Now, Yaton finally turned his attention to his girlfriend and asked.

"Don't you Protoss use area-of-effect attacks to clear the way? What's with all the psionic storms, solar rays, purifying beams, and all sorts of weird orbital cannons I can't even name?" Hyperion explained the origin of his earlier opinion.

"It's just because sometimes we don't need to aim, not that we don't aim," Adun said somewhat irritably.

“That’s true. Your dragon riders are quite skilled at aiming. For example, Phoenix’s dragon rider back then really bullied Kerrigan.” Hyperion mentioned a Protoss hero.

"It's a pity that Lord Phoenix still died at Kerrigan's hands in the end." When Hyperion mentioned Phoenix, Adun, who was aiming his machine gun, paused.

"So it was only later that your Phoenix realized that hand-to-hand combat is the only way to win!" Hyperion said with a smile.

“Lord Phoenix…” Adun probably knew why the Hyperion always mentioned Phoenix, because the Protoss who had the best relationship with the Hyperion’s commander, Raynor, was that very witty Templar.

Whether it's the two interstellar ship girls who seem to have drifted off into some unknown dimension, or the ship girl players in the room who aren't quite sure what the word "quasi" that Hyperion just mentioned actually means.

No one knew that the online live stream of this team friendly match had already exploded.

In a short period of time, the number of viewers has increased from less than 10,000 to nearly 100,000, and more than half of these 100,000 people are repeatedly watching the scene where Adun took down the two machine guns on the turret of the T-54 tank with three bullets.