Book 9, Chapter 25 (1/2)
Evacuation Plan
Richard was currently in his command centre in Bluewater, staring at a map of Faelor with a frown on his face. The distant cloned brain had already sent a report of the battle, and things were not pretty. He had lost a wasp and 300 elite soldiers, while the reapers had lost a single flying machine after a level 14 officer went all-out.
The only source of consolation was that the scale of the enemy wasn’t all that large, but it seemed like the wasp had only met with a small detachment. How else would the reapers destroy entire planes? Unfortunately, he just didn’t have much credible information.
After some deliberation, he decided to send the nearest cloned brain to gather all aerial troops in the vicinity and go into battle with the machines. The brain itself was pretty strong, and with a hundred level 12 winged serpents it immediately set off for a grand battle.
A grand battle that lasted one minute and six seconds. All of Richard’s forces were destroyed in that pitiful length of time, and the cloned brain only broadcast a short capture of what it deemed important. That image showed a sizeable machine currently on the ground, mechanical battles carrying red and white cubes into it in line. One part of the image showed a distant beetle cutting into the wasp corpse, another separating armour pieces from the dead humans and trying to compress them.
The sight left him shocked. This was eerily similar to how the broodmother’s drones collected resources! The only difference was that the drones were living beings, while the reaper machines seemed almost purely mechanical. However, the way these machines performed their tasks made it obvious that they had to have some form of intelligence as well, intelligence that was not inferior to his drones.
Richard lost all control of the northeastern skies with that battle, even giving up a valuable cloned brain, but he had also obtained some key information as well. Given the fact that none of his drones would have escaped anyway— the smallest machines from the reapers could travel a little under twice as fast as the cloned brain— it was an acceptable compromise.
The attacks from the winged serpents showed that the reapers had great resistance to most magic, but while they were almost impervious to cold, heat and lightning spells did have some effect. Even the smallest of the war machines were extremely powerful and made from metal, full-fledged attacks from the winged serpents only leaving scratches on the surface. The entire battle had only killed ten of the smallest ones, while the bigger ones were completely unharmed.
Richard immediately contacted Gangdor, ordering him to focus on defence and wait for reinforcements. Adjusting the map to focus around the Bellowing Canyon, he marked out a few important areas for scouting. Another cloned brain was ordered into the skies, commanding a squad of aerial beasts to split up into two groups that scanned east-west and north-south respectively. After that, he drew a line near a sparsely populated territory towards the eastern ends of the Iron Triangle Empire; dozens of flying beasts set off to defend the location.
……
Once he was done planning for the initial wave, Richard teleported to the Frozen Throne and met Emperor Salwyn in the palace. The man had grown thinner over the past few days, but his aura had evolved to truly match his position as the ruler of the Iron Triangle Empire. Of course, all that majesty had to give way as he bowed respectfully, “Your Majesty.”
Richard smiled in response. Although it had been some time since he had crushed the Empire, Salwyn seemed to understand his position well and didn’t even think about independence. Now, that loyalty would be rewarded, “You’ve been managing things well for the past few years. How’s your army?”
“The original ten corps have been rebuilt and reequipped, and we added ten more. There are also twenty secondary divisions with basic training complete, as well as fifty brigades of militia. Combining everything, we have more than four million soldiers ready for war.”
“Not bad, but that’s a million short of our goal.”
“This army is already strong enough to sweep through Faelor, and it still can’t compare to yours. You never told me why we needed to build up such a force,” Salwyn stated in confusion. Maintaining an army of this size was a huge burden that would have left him bankrupt without Richard’s support.