The Demon Castle star system · the Demon Castle.
"Your Majesty the Demon King, you need only hold the enemy's great host in check for one month. When once my master's mighty legion fleets descend, the whole case may be altered. This is your one chance."
A fist struck straight through the shape of light; the Demon King's hair hung loose about him, and his look was somewhat scattered.
"Your Majesty the Demon King, you need only hold the enemy's great host in check for one month. When once my master's mighty legion fleets descend, the whole case may be altered. This is your one chance."
The voice within the shape of light kept coming without cease.
The Demon King shut it off in his fury.
He drew great breaths, and there was a heavy fierceness about him.
He knows he has been used by the other side; in truth, long before their partnership, the two of them stood in a relation of using one another.
He had his own eye upon the technology in the other's hands, meaning to make his own Demon Race's military strength great by it, and to shake the other off at the last.
But as it looks now, in the end it is he who has been reduced to the other's chess-piece.
The other has borrowed his own Demon Race legion fleets to hold the enemy's great host in check here.
What the other's aim may be he does not know, but assuredly something is being schemed.
And he is the tool within the other's hand.
"No! I have a chance yet! I have a chance yet. Let a third-party power but step in, and the universe will fall into the greater confusion, and then I shall have my chance to rise again!" the Demon King said with a savage grin.
He is now a man fallen into a well: let there be but the least chance, and he will contrive by every means to seize it,
though the rope let down to him be covered over with thorns.
"Ha, ha, ha, ha. I shall not lose! I shall not lose!"
The Demon King's mad laughter carried through the whole of the Demon King's hall.
And from this time the Owl Dragon legion fleets, the Angel Race legion fleets and the Machine Race legion fleets fought their way, in mid-August, to the border of the Demon Castle star system.
After a brief five days' refitting,
upon about the twentieth day of August, in the year 3036 of the Galactic Star Calendar, the three-sided allied host loosed its assault upon the Demon Castle star system.
And the strength of the two sides differed by very little.
Upon the allied side two million interstellar warships were gathered, with certain interstellar fleets besides putting down those within the other Demon Race territories who still stubbornly resisted.
Within the Demon Castle star system were some two million seven hundred thousand interstellar warships, and, beyond them, the defensive works built at the cost of a great store of the Demon Race's reserves.
This assault may be called the greatest storming battle of the known universe in near a thousand years.
In the first days the allies' attack went slowly, and leaned wholly upon the covering fire of the interstellar missile ships.
Eating away bit by bit at the Demon Castle star system's lines of defense, pulling out one by one the bridgehead positions the Demon Race had set up.
For, to avoid too many casualties in the course of the advance, no deadlocked war of attrition was allowed to arise.
But this meant at the same time that the allies' consumption of ordnance reached a terrible degree.
"The way this war is fought, it is no different from burning money. In a single day alone we have consumed strategic materials to the value of 50 trillion star coins. Were our interstellar transport fleets not running at full load, merely to keep up such a consumption would be a hard business." Lilith rubbed at her temples, looking with something of a headache at these days' expenditure upon the field.
Long before the attack was loosed such a case had been looked for.
Yet when the string of figures truly stood before her eyes, her heart was still somewhat ill at ease.
"It is not we alone who bear it. And by what we agreed upon before, the combat materials consumed in this storming battle, the interstellar missiles above all. Though the most of them are produced and furnished by us. The outlay is still borne by all three sides together; and though we settled the purchase price of the interstellar missiles beforehand at a very favorable figure. We can at the least be sure that in this war we neither lose nor gain." Zhao Chen wore something of the look of a crafty merchant.
Lilith rolled her eyes; and happily the Commander had settled this proposal with the Angel Race and the Machine Race, or there is no telling how much Owl Dragon would have had to put into this war.
The reason the other two sides agreed is that Owl Dragon holds the technology.
To hold the technology is very often to hold the right of speech,
the more so as everyone wishes to cut the grass and pull up the roots, and destroy the Demon Race's present ruling power.
"And how goes the building plan upon the three chief engineers' side?" Zhao Chen raised at this point a piece of work he had given out before.
Lilith called up the relevant material and said, "The three chief engineers made their survey of the five industrial bases the Machine Race handed over to us a month ago. And drew up the relevant draft plans of production. Among them, beyond the production tasks for regular interstellar warships. The chief thing is the plan for producing the two T6 interstellar warships. By your requirement, the T6 Wrath-of-Heaven-Goddess-class Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ship is the first priority. The three chief engineers spent some little time in giving over the production of 50 percent of the T6 Wrath-of-Heaven-Goddess-class's less important components to the Machine Race's five industrial bases, which can greatly shorten the time of production. The remainder is given to our own Owl Dragon Star System's industrial bases to produce. It is looked for that she will finally come off the line and enter service in some three months. She can be delivered before the end of October, and form her fighting power in November. As for the other, the T6 starship Southern Heaven Gate, she will be delivered before the end of December, and form her fighting power next year."
Hearing Lilith's report,
Zhao Chen sighed lightly. "By the look of it there is not much chance of getting that T6 Wrath-of-Heaven-Goddess-class Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ship up in time for this storming battle against the Demon Race."
By the plan Charlotte settled upon at the last, this battle for the Demon Castle star system can be ended before the end of October.
At a guess, even were she in time, the T6 Wrath-of-Heaven-Goddess-class could only come up for the final curtain.
Having said all this, Zhao Chen's face fell into deep thought once more.
Lilith marked his look, and inquired, "Commander, is there something you have been turning over these last few days?"
As his secretary, Lilith has seen the Commander wear this thinking look often in these days.
Zhao Chen sighed, and said with a grave face, "The business of the Demon Race; the business of the Mechanical Divine Church; and this business we have lately learned of, the uncanny thing with the life-energy signals. These matters have all along been past settling, the last two above all. They leave me very uneasy. And I have a foreboding that the secrets of a great deal of this may lie upon the other side of that Gate of Gaia. That leader of the Machine Race said too, before she went into her sleep, that if only I could go to the Gate of Gaia's far side. I should come to know certain secrets. So by the case as it stands, I have been thinking. Whether in the end I should go now, or wait until this war is ended and go then."