The Naval Base of the Unnamed Ship Girls

"Done! Whew..."

Ardon looked at the rhomboid crystal tower made entirely of psionic crystals floating in front of him and let out a long sigh.

Exhaling isn't because I'm nervous about not being able to achieve my goal, but simply because I'm exhausted.

Stacking blocks of wood isn't a particularly difficult task, but starting from turning the soil, then planting trees, cutting them down, shaping and polishing them into individual blocks, and finally stacking them into a block castle is no easy feat.

Especially with time running out, Adun also diverted some of its reserve computing power to perform multi-threaded operations. With most functions still unavailable, even the Ark-class mothership Adun felt somewhat exhausted.

After resting for a while, Adun assembled several ring-shaped metal stabilizers in his ship's equipment space and installed them on the already formed crystal tower. Then he poured in a little psionic energy to activate it. Feeling the familiar energy field, Adun smiled with a sense of accomplishment.

Unfortunately, Adun's smile didn't last long. The energy field of the crystal tower, which could be used as a regular detection system, told Adun that an uninvited guest had appeared in the vicinity of this sea area.

Adun, carefully protecting the Crystal Tower behind her, looked at the Deep Sea Princess, with whom she had a somewhat complicated relationship with the admiral. Seeing that the princess hadn't attacked immediately, she pondered for a moment and spoke first:

Good morning, have you eaten yet?

If there were crows in the ocean, they would surely be flying right between this Deep Sea Princess and Adun, their throats snarling.

Perhaps not expecting Adon's first reaction upon discovering her, the Deep Sea Princess, who had prepared a series of preparations, was also stunned for a while after realizing that none of her preparations were useful. She replied in a hoarse, hollow voice...

"I didn't have a good appetite, so I only ate a little."

"..." Wait, the plot shouldn't be like this. What happened to the scene where the ship girls and the deep-sea fleet would fight as soon as they met? Why is it different when it happens to me?

This kind of casual, neighborly interaction shouldn't happen between ship girls and deep-sea characters, especially in a region that's practically a war zone.

Perhaps both ship girls from different factions sensed that the current situation was somewhat delicate, and after a casual remark, they both fell into an eerie silence.

Did the phase array system go offline due to excessive computational load when building the crystal tower? Otherwise, how could a Deep Sea Princess have come knocking on my door? Although my psionic shield is not afraid of the primitive firepower of this world, this kind of BOSS-level guy might have some kind of advanced technology. If I get beaten to a pulp, it would be incredibly embarrassing.

"I didn't evade your radar." Perhaps guessing what Adun was thinking, the Deep Sea Princess on the other side explained in a mysterious tone, "I just used my own methods to move to your side."

"Special skills?" Wow, this is really cutting-edge technology! Not long ago, I had a casual chat with Guogan and heard her talk about the combat power rating of ship girls and the differences between the first generation and the next generation of ship girls, leaving aside the inexplicable classification of mentor class, general class, hero class, leader class and so on.

The biggest difference between the first generation of ship girls and the next generation of ship girls is that the first generation of ship girls have their own special skills when they are summoned. These skills may come from the characteristics of the ship type itself, their merits, or even legends.

For the next generation of ship girls to awaken this special skill, they need a long battle and a crucial bit of luck.

The reason why many second-generation ship girls are easily defeated by first-generation ship girls is due to their special abilities that completely defy science. For example, in the Eastern Pacific Governor's Air Fleet, there is a veteran hero-class first-generation ship girl named Hornet. Her special ability is that all her carrier-based bombers automatically transform into the special hero-class flight formation, the B-25 Doolittle Raid.

The Hornet with this skill is a true warrior among bombers, a pure man ship girl who never looks back at the explosion.

The deep-sea ship girl in front of us, who seems to have a subtle relationship with the admiral, obviously also has similar abilities to evade radar monitoring or teleport.

Hmm, is this the case of someone who brags and gets slapped in the face immediately? For a moment, Adun couldn't think of any way to subdue an opponent who could evade radar detection and instantly move to his side.

"Special skill, huh? What a nostalgic term." Deep Sea Princess seemed to recall something upon hearing Adon's words, and spoke in a reminiscent tone.

"...Could it be that you were a ship girl before?" Immediately recalling certain conclusions from those books by Kogan, Yadun continued, "You still possess memories of your time as a ship girl?"

What happened to forgetting everything? So all those so-called experts and professors are just spouting nonsense!

"What do you mean I still have my memories as a ship girl? Am I not a ship girl now?" Abyssal Princess's hoarse and hollow voice had no inflection whatsoever, and it was not at all like she was questioning Adun.

You should be in the deep sea right now, and you should be the boss-level character in the deep sea, the Deep Sea Princess.

Sensing that the deep-sea fleets had entered his radar monitoring range, Adun raised his arm in a defensive stance, and his expression became serious.

“Strange, very strange…” Deep Sea Princess said, her voice slightly changing, without reacting to Adon’s actions.

"What's strange?" Adon pondered his next move.

"Strange, have you never felt any hostility towards me even now?"

Despite Adon's less-than-friendly posture, the Deep Sea Princess could still sense that Adon had never truly harbored any hostility towards her, a discovery that puzzled her greatly.

"Why would I harbor hostility towards a ship girl I don't know well? Even if she's supposedly an enemy, she's just from a different faction." Besides, you might have connections with my admiral, so it's best to leave some room for maneuver.

"Yes, why would there be hostility? Why wouldn't there be hostility?" Deep Sea Princess inexplicably discovered that not only did Adun not feel hostility towards her, but she herself had never felt hostility towards Adun either.

This is something very worthy of her investigation as the Deep Sea Princess.

"If you and I are just part of this war, why should we care about whether there is hostility?" The Protoss civilization, which has been under the rule of the gods for many years, does not quite understand the concept of hostility. To them, war is war, without so many complicated things.

As soon as he said those words, Adun began to quietly transfer the energy system to the ship's equipment on his arm and the short-range warp drive system, striving to carry out a quick and effective decapitation strike just like last time.

"I see, that puts my mind at ease." The Deep Sea Princess, who seemed to have drawn some conclusion from Adun's reaction, suddenly changed the subject and said, "As that child's ship girl, please take good care of her for me."

After saying that, the Deep Sea Princess transformed into a pool of seawater and scattered onto the sea surface.

So it was a matter replacement. No wonder it avoided the phase array system. But next time... wait, you still haven't told me what your relationship is with my admiral!

Adon was somewhat bewildered by the Deep Sea Princess who appeared out of nowhere, said a bunch of nonsensical things, and then disappeared just as inexplicably.

In particular, the phased array radar showed that those deep-sea patrol fleets seemed to have received some orders and returned to their original patrol routes instead of continuing to come this way.

Could this Deep Sea Princess be the Admiral's mother?

Chapter 19 This world ultimately belongs to my great Celestial Spirit.

At the edge of the dark deep-sea control location, at the intersection of the realm of light and the dark zone, the Deep Sea Princess, who had just vanished in a puddle of seawater in front of Adun, slowly floated to the surface.

"Boss, are you just going to let this bitch get away like this?"

The adjutant who appeared with Princess Abyss asked his superior in a slightly exaggerated tone.

"Do you think I let her off the hook?" This time, without pointing her exaggeratedly large main gun at her adjutant, Abyssal Princess spoke in a cold voice.

"Huh, could it be that she let you go, boss? You're just a newborn ship girl, you don't even know how to aim properly." The adjutant's words made no attempt to hide her contempt for Adun.

As the adjutant of the Deep Sea Princess, even if her combat strength is not as good as her boss's, she is still one of the top experts in the Deep Sea Fleet under the Princess's command.

In her mind, ship girls who had just emerged from the construction machine and possessed only a bunch of "fictional" memories could be easily blasted home with a single shot.

Well, even if the adjutant's characteristic is to sacrifice artillery firepower for defense, it's still the same.

This kind of mentality among adjutants is not only found among the clear-headed deep-sea ship girls, but it is also quite popular among the ship girls in the human faction.

For example, rarity does not equate to combat power, and first-generation ship girls are not necessarily guaranteed to crush second-generation ship girls. It's said that three parts are determined by fate and seven parts by hard work.

Unfortunately, if the target were Adun, Adun would only say, "Honey, you bunch of naive fools! Don't you know that getting 90 points depends on your dad...? Hilarious!"

"Maybe that's why she let me go." Deep Sea Princess didn't intend to tell her adjutant that when Adun took that defensive stance, she felt a strange tremor in her heart. She was just a newly hatched ship girl, could she really have the ability to threaten her?

(Adun: Hey, take this! Shadowstep, Backstab, Eviscerate, and Guillotine combo!)

"Hey! Boss, I know you have a close relationship with that garrison commander over there, but don't boost his morale and diminish your own."

The adjutant didn't believe what the Deep Sea Princess said at all. Only she, as a fellow Deep Sea Princess, knew best just how powerful a Deep Sea Princess with her own special skills was.

If we consider Abyssal Princess and all the Abyssal ship girls under her command as an Abyssal Legion, half of the Legion's combat power comes from the sum of all the other Abyssal ship girls starting from this adjutant, while the other half consists of Abyssal Princess alone.

Moving natural disasters, nightmares from the deep sea, omens of destruction—these are not titles deliberately promoted by humans, but rather truly deserved by the Deep Sea Princess.

Decades ago, when the human ship girl faction and the deep-sea faction were fighting tooth and nail, every action taken by a deep-sea princess was a war of national annihilation.

Too lazy to explain further to her adjutant, the Deep Sea Princess continued to gaze with an eerie and inexplicable look towards the distant temporary garrison.

Unfortunately, without a super-large-scale, bug-level phased array radar system like Adun, the Deep Sea Princess had no way of seeing what was happening on that naval base.

Similarly, for Adon, who wanted to monitor the Deep Sea Princess, even with the power turned up several times, the invincible phase array system was unable to detect the slightest movement in the dark deep sea.

Could this be another rule interference from the suppressive force? Gazing at the darkness on the horizon, Adun helplessly returned the phase array system to its normal scanning range.

Since the crystal tower I had worked so hard to build had already been seen by the enemy's big boss, I naturally couldn't place it overseas, where it wasn't so safe.

Ardon didn't want to gamble that the high-tech Deep Sea Princess didn't have a way to crack the phase cloaking system.

Let's just put it inside the naval base. The detection range is a bit small, but the remaining resources should be enough to build a photon turret.

Sigh, our Ark has somehow ended up doing the work of the Protoss's most basic work unit, the Probe, and we're even enjoying it. Adun feels like he's inexplicably fallen into depravity.

Once we have enough resources, we must find a place to build the Protoss Nexus; that will make things much easier.

A home with a psychic nexus, a mothership core floating overhead, and photon turrets everywhere—that's the Protoss tradition.

However... I still hope that this world has enough resources to build a Protoss Nexus. Thinking about that ridiculous conversion rate, Adun can't help but feel a little worried.

A Protoss Nexus, an interstellar colony fortress used during the Protoss's Great Expansion, requires resources calculated in massive quantities, measured in units of high-energy polymers like terazosin and phantom crystals.

Without these things, without even high-energy gas and energy crystals, a world that relies solely on canned fuel, chocolate-flavored steel, and cream-puff-like aluminum for conversion...

In just a few nanoseconds, Adun calculated how much material was needed to achieve his initial goal.

Let alone selling the Admiral, even selling the Governor-General's Office of the Eastern Pacific might not be enough.

Even Adun, who had a complete set of Protoss colonization plans stored in his memory, was still very troubled by the fact that he was running out of resources.

Speaking of colonization, we have to mention why the Ark of Adun is defined by the world as a support and supply mothership. When Kokang first met Adun, it was not impossible for them to exchange a rare aluminum vodka for a carrier-based aircraft.

Adun does have carrier-based aircraft, or rather, a carrier-based fleet, but even if Adun really took out what was in its storage compartments, it certainly wouldn't be the cute little planes that Kokang wanted.

As the Protoss's last trump card, Adun's shipboard space is stocked with an entire legion of Templars and a Protoss fleet of the same size.

These items were preserved by the Protoss after the end of the War of Ages, when their civilization entered its most glorious era.

However, these things are of no use to Adun, who can't even build a Protoss Nexus right now.

Summoning those things requires a complete Protoss phase warp system, and Adun, who had spent a lot of effort to get an energy crystal tower, decided to put that kind of thing aside for now.

If the goal is to recreate the Protoss's golden age space fleet, it will exhaust the ships.

Let's take it one step at a time.

This world will eventually belong to us, the Great Astral Spirits.

(Hahaha, I've built a second Lion! I'm now completely in MRI mode!)

Chapter 20: Which side is stronger in its "cannon-based" approach?

"Hey, Kogan, what are you doing?" Ardon, who had brought the Crystal Tower back to the naval base like a floating baby, only saw a gun barrel with a caliber large enough to fit a destroyer ship girl horizontally in the place where the admiral used to flaunt his wealth by throwing materials.

"Kokang is building cannons, cough cough." Upon hearing Yadun's words, a sound with its own echo came from the cannon barrel.

After a series of thumping footsteps, Kokang, wearing welding goggles and covered in soot, ran out of the grime.

This design… Yaton stared at the destroyer girl, Kogan, who had transformed into a glorious working class, for a long time before silently pointing to the cannon barrel next to her, which had evolved from a high-pressure water pipe into a sewer pipe, and could be thick enough to raise a rat and four turtles, and asked, “Is this a cannon?”

Where's the base? Where's the fire control platform? And where are you planning to put this huge pipe?

"Kogan has already taken care of the base and fire control platform." Kogan said in a tone that seemed to say, "Come and praise me!" as he slipped into the warehouse next door.

The massive warehouse doors slowly opened amidst a metallic clanging sound, and a war chariot nearly twenty times the height of an Adun humanoid was pushed out from behind by Gogan.