Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 331: Free Fall

In an instant, all the creations of his fleet were subjected to a gravitational acceleration roughly half that of Earth, which was already astonishing enough to exceed Tom’s imagination.

After all, even if Tom himself actively accelerated, the maximum overall acceleration of the human fleet could only reach about 0.9 m/s^2, merely about one-sixth of this number.

Through superluminal communication equipment, Tom also detected that just a few seconds earlier, his own warships located on the edge of the battlefield, approximately 9 million kilometers away, had instantly detected an acceleration of about 2,000 m/s^2!

The most maneuverable warship Tom had ever built had a maximum acceleration of only 1,000 m/s^2, roughly equivalent to 100 times Earth’s gravity.

And this current number was roughly equivalent to 200 times Earth’s gravity!

Under such high gravity, even the hulls of warships made of Strong Nuclear materials would be instantly damaged and crushed.

Not only that, but in areas closer to the core of the battlefield, Tom’s warships detected even higher accelerations.

From the edge of the battlefield inward, about 100,000 kilometers deep, the warships there sensed an acceleration of approximately 3,100 m/s^2, as high as 316 times Earth’s gravity; further inward, the gravitational acceleration value climbed again, and when it reached a mere 10,000 kilometers from the core of the battlefield, the gravitational acceleration value Tom detected was hundreds of kilometers per second squared, tens of thousands of times Earth’s gravity, comparable to the gravity on the surface of a white dwarf!

But at this moment, facing such high gravity, not a single warship was damaged.

Four words suddenly appeared in Tom’s mind.

Free fall!

Earth’s gravitational acceleration is approximately 9.8 m/s^2.

So, how can one experience weightlessness within Earth’s gravity field?

The method is simple: fall towards Earth at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2.

At this moment, everything in Tom’s fleet was experiencing different accelerations towards the core of the battlefield, varying with distance, but they felt no overload whatsoever; the only possibility was that everything in his fleet was undergoing free fall motion!

However, free fall can only occur within a gravity field. And how massive must a planet be to create a gravity field with such high gravitational acceleration?

After a simple calculation, Tom figured out that at this very moment, the star at the core of the battlefield, which he could not see at all, should have a mass of approximately 3.75 times that of the Sun.

A mass equivalent to 3.75 Suns packed into such a small area, creating such a powerful gravity field, yet he couldn’t see anything?

This seemed to imply only one possibility.

A black hole had appeared out of thin air there!

Only a black hole could possess such high mass and such small volume, and emit no detectable radiation!

But there was clearly nothing there before. Why did a black hole of such immense mass suddenly appear now?

Tom instantly recalled the unknown civilization he had seen earlier, highly suspected to have reached the Gravity Civilization stage, and the tens of thousands of interstellar missiles launched by that unknown civilization.

Could this black hole have been created by that Gravity Civilization?

For what purpose?

Regardless of the purpose for now, he needed to accelerate first to counteract this gravity.

The warships in the battlefield were destroyed, so be it; after all, they were just remote-controlled warships, and not all of them were his; there were also enemy ones.

But if his main fleet were to be sucked in, the losses would be immense; all his creations, all races, all clones, including the Flying Star, would be destroyed.

At this moment, every aerospace carrier, transport ship, habitation ship, industrial ship, warship, including the Flying Star, activated their propulsion power to the maximum.

At this point, they no longer cared if the formation was orderly; escaping this gravity field was the priority.

While some smaller spacecraft could generate enough thrust to break free from this gravity field, some larger spacecraft, especially aerospace carriers, even with their engines at maximum propulsion power, could only impart an acceleration of no more than two meters per second squared to their hulls, merely delaying the inevitable; in the long run, they would still be sucked into that seemingly invisible black hole.

However... he couldn’t worry about that much for now; escape as many as possible.

Tom’s main fleet began full-power propulsion, abandoning the warships in the battlefield.

Even the warships at the edge of the battlefield, experiencing the least gravity, were subjected to a gravitational acceleration of a full 2,000 m/s^2, while the warships’ maximum maneuverability was only 1,000 m/s^2; they simply couldn’t break free, and Tom didn’t bother to waste effort.

But his opponent did not seem to think so.

Tom saw that the moment the invisible strong gravity source appeared, approximately 400,000 warships under the opponent’s control simultaneously activated their maximum propulsion, desperately trying to escape from this gravity field.

Those warships were all built by Tom himself; he knew their performance very well and understood their immense power.

In the vast starry sky, the tail flames spewing from the rear of numerous warships and spacecraft had gradually changed from bright white to bright blue—this meant that the engine’s thrust and propulsion power had even exceeded their original design limits.

Under such immense thrust, those spacecraft were like raging behemoths with infinite strength, struggling with all their might.

But... 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The invisible gravity was like unimaginably thick and tough chains, firmly pulling all these raging behemoths.

No matter how strong their struggle, they could not break free from these gravitational chains; instead, they were still being forcibly pulled back by them.

One was pushing with all its might, the other was pulling with all its might. Under the combined action of these two forces, the hulls made of extremely advanced Strong Nuclear materials collapsed instantly, as if undergoing an implosion, and were completely destroyed.

But... even the destroyed wreckage could not escape the pull of the gravitational chains. Those bright fireballs were still mercilessly pulled towards the core of the battlefield.

In just over ten minutes, this vast and fiercely contested battlefield became as clean as a floor swept by a powerful vacuum cleaner, leaving nothing behind.

Except for one thing.

A perfectly smooth sphere, emitting a bright blue light, almost perfectly standard, with a radius of only about 20 meters.