After waiting a little longer in the office, another piece of news about an Abyssal flagship arrived—plunging the room into a silence as heavy as a grave.
"Central Marshal Wakayama Shogo reports: one thousand nautical miles southeast of Qiongzhou Island, a new Abyssal flagship has been spotted. Preliminary assessment identifies it as Abyssal Barbarossa, six-star high-speed battlecruiser, level 100. Durability exceeds 2,300 points, firepower close to 300, armor around 140. Its weakness appears to be extremely low evasion—possibly near zero."
A dead silence followed. The air itself seemed to freeze.
This might be the most durable Abyssal flagship in recorded history. For comparison—Tirpitz has 101 durability, firepower in the 190s, and 100 armor.
Durability is the hardest attribute to raise; it's essentially their HP, usually fixed upon a shipgirl's birth.
But 2,300 points? That level of endurance had never appeared in three thousand years of military history.
No one could imagine how they were supposed to defeat something like that.
As for the "low evasion" weakness—let's be honest. With that much durability and armor, even without dodging, she could probably take a hydrogen bomb and shrug it off.
Only a full-on encirclement by shipgirls with equally high levels and equipped with five-star AP shells might stand a chance.
Yamato's expression turned grave. After closing her eyes in thought for a moment, she stood and looked to Hikaru. "There's no way these are the only Abyssal flagships. Get ready. I'll need your shipgirls to accompany me to the forward command post shortly."
"Understood." Hikaru rose to his feet, then paused. He turned to the comms officer and asked, "Do we have a reading on Abyssal Barbarossa's anti-air stat?"
Barbarossa was a German-planned naval vessel. Generally speaking, both German and Japanese shipgirls have weak anti-air capabilities. Take Bismarck, for example—such a powerful ship, and yet her anti-air guns were mostly hand-loaded 37mm crank-operated cannons. Manual single-shot loading with a rate of fire of 3–4 seconds per round—basically shooting anti-tank guns at planes. An utter disgrace for anti-air defense.
The officer hesitated, then checked the telegram. "There are no carrier-capable shipgirls in Marshal Wakayama's fleet, so we couldn't assess Abyssal Barbarossa's anti-air performance."
Even if she had weak anti-air, just standing there and tanking Lexington's attacks wouldn't be easy to overcome—especially not with an escort fleet backing her up. In comparison, Lexington's high resource consumption was barely even a concern.
"I'm going too," Hikaru said, adjusting his collar and pinning the Central Captain insignia to his chest. "I want to see an Abyssal flagship with my own eyes."
The forward command post of the Southern Seas war zone lay five hundred nautical miles south of Windridge, onboard a warship—also serving as the flagship of the Southern Seas Fleet.
The Grand Marshal held the highest military rank in the hierarchy—above Marshal. Equivalent to an Imperial Marshal or Supreme Commander in other nations, though nowadays the title was more honorary than functional.
That flagship was a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with a displacement of over one hundred thousand tons. More than 300 meters long and 40 meters wide, its entire deck was covered in structures, gear, and personnel—clearly not intended to launch aircraft.
Its name was famous: Silent Horizon, the flagship of the Southern Seas Fleet. The Grand Marshal's pennant flapped proudly atop her tower. More than a dozen cruisers escorted her, and according to a whispered report from Fletcher, three nuclear submarines had also been detected lurking around 600 meters below.
Hikaru naturally understood what those subs were: China's most advanced Warwolf-class nuclear submarines, imported at great expense from New Terra using cutting-edge technology. At over a billion dollars per unit, they were considered the most expensive and quietest nuclear subs in the world.
But their presence was somewhat ironic. These subs were practically undetectable by human tech, but stronger shipgirls could sense them as easily as reading lines on a palm. Take Fletcher, for example—she could detect Abyssal transport vessels thousands of meters underwater without any special sonar gear or anti-sub equipment.
(End of Chapter)
[+50 Power Stones = Extra Chapter]