"Do not be afraid; they are all of them the subordinates I trust most. Charlotte, Lilith." Zhao Chen made the two of them known to Hive Princess.
The two came forward as well, and gave Hive Princess greeting.
Set against Charlotte's composure, Lilith was greatly taken with this little creature; and with that glib tongue of hers besides, in a little while she had drawn close to Hive Princess.
Zhao Chen and Charlotte, for their part, talked of the Owl Dragon Legion and of matters upon the battlefield.
"How stands the fighting at present? Before the year's end, can we swallow the Demon Castle star system?" Zhao Chen threw out his own thought directly.
Charlotte opened the star map, upon which the state of the fighting throughout the Demon Castle star system could be seen.
Set against how it had stood before Zhao Chen went to the Gate of Gaia.
The black region within the Demon Castle star system had plainly shrunk by a great deal.
It was as though an apple had been nibbled away, and none could say by how many bites.
"At present, upon this quarter of the Demon Castle star system, within the two months past, and at the cost of 300,000 interstellar warships lost by our three-party allied army, we have annihilated 900,000 interstellar warships of the enemy's garrison! Of that number, the Owl Dragon Legion's own losses stand at 30,000 interstellar warships."
Charlotte paused, and explained: "That our losses are the fewest is not because we have shuffled the fighting off upon others. Upon this point both the Angel Race and the Demon Race are clear. Our losses are few only because our interstellar warships are the stronger, and because, when a hull's condition upon the battlefield is no longer equal to the fighting, we can withdraw it in good time. We are, after all, uniformly of T4 and T5 grade interstellar warships now. But the Angel Race and the Machine Race still use certain T3-grade interstellar warships among them, and their T4 series comes nowhere near the standard of our Owl Dragon-line T4 interstellar warships."
Summed into a single sentence: the Owl Dragon-line interstellar warships are tough-skinned and can take a beating.
Charlotte pointed at the place of the Demon Castle star system: "Though there are at present 1.8 million Demon interstellar warships yet within the Demon Castle star system, a third of them stand in some degree of battle damage. And we reckon the industrial facilities within the Demon Castle star system to be limited, so that it will be hard to provide repairs[1] for so many interstellar warships in any short time. Therefore, of these 1.8 million remaining, a part are wanting in fighting power. Which is greatly to our advantage! As to what you spoke of, the taking of the Demon Castle star system before the year's end, in theory there is no difficulty in it. It rests only upon what price you are willing to bear."
The price again.
To gnaw through this hard bone, it came still to the question of how great a price must be paid.
"Besides which, we must bear a portion of risk as well," Charlotte said gravely.
"Risk? You mean those two hive-race nests?" Zhao Chen asked.
Charlotte nodded: "Upon the clues you furnished before, we guess that these two hive-race nests have to do with both the Mechanical Divine Church and the Demon King's faction. Yet from the appearance of the two hive-race nests until now, a hive-race fleet above a hundred million strong, and with our attacks upon the Demon Castle star system going forward without cease, they have still made no motion whatever. As though they had given up the Demon Castle star system altogether. But I suspect that this is a plot laid behind those two hive-race nests. They are waiting! Waiting upon an occasion."
Charlotte pointed at the Demon Castle star system once more: "Were it myself in their place. Then I should choose the moment when the Owl Dragon Legion and the allied army were at the very height of their struggle with the Demon Castle garrison, when the fish dies and the net is broken! If you do not press upon the time, we may perfectly well make a boiling of the frog in warm water, and keep our guard upon the two hive-race nests."
Having said it, Charlotte looked toward Zhao Chen.
It could be seen that Charlotte's own mind inclined rather to a boiling of the frog in warm water.
But Zhao Chen very soon struck the board upon it.
He said in a low voice: "Whatever comes of it, the Demon Castle star system must be taken before the year's end. I know that there may be risk in this. But the two hive-race nests stand there still; and if we use the means of a boiling of the frog in warm water, who is to say whether it will not turn out that the enemy is boiling us? While the enemy makes no motion, we can find no flaw in him. Only when the enemy has been made to move can we find our occasion!"
In saying this, Zhao Chen had upon the one hand the quarterly mission for his reason.
Upon the other, this was indeed what he thought.
Ever since he came to know of the existence of Order, Zhao Chen had kept a high guard upon any dangerous existence whatever within this universe he stood in.
Who was to say whether these dangerous existences might not become a springboard for Order?
"I understand. I shall guard against such dangers as may be discovered, and at the least cost in casualties. Before the year's end, the Demon Castle star system shall be taken." Charlotte had no objection whatever to the Commander's thought.
Rather she made, along the direction the Commander pointed out, the arrangements most fitting to it.
And this was the very reason Zhao Chen could with an easy mind throw the whole of military affairs upon Charlotte.
"And how stands our Owl Dragon Legion now?" Zhao Chen went on to concern himself with the Owl Dragon Legion's state.
"I told you before that we lost 30,000 interstellar warships. But with the terrible output of the industrial bases in the rear as things now stand. Not only have those 30,000 interstellar warships been made good. Our Owl Dragon Seventeenth Legion is very nearly finished building besides. The Owl Dragon Eighteenth, the Nineteenth and the Twentieth are looked for to be built entire within the last three months of this year. By that time our Owl Dragon Legion will have twenty legions at full establishment. Above 600,000 interstellar warships. Among them, above 2,000 T5 interstellar warships. Counting the Machine Race's strength only within our home universe, all the T5 interstellar warships within the whole known universe put together still do not come to so many as our Owl Dragon's! And the remainder are uniformly T4 interstellar warships!" Charlotte's face, as she told over these things, was full of pride.
It was a thick and solid industrial foundation that gave the Owl Dragon the capital for such a bursting-forth of ships as this.
Even interstellar warships of the T5 grade could be turned out as upon a production line.
The output was terrible!
That label, the Owl Dragon-line interstellar warship, had become within the known universe another name outright for the first-choice brand in interstellar warships.
Those Owl Dragon-line interstellar warships put up for sale, every one of them, were more in demand than the supply could meet.
And certain Owl Dragon-line interstellar warships that had drifted onto the black market were bid up to prices that touched heaven.
A T2 Black-Rhino-class Interstellar Heavy-Assault Frigate, for instance.
The Owl Dragon Galactic Interstellar Group's price to the outside was 2 million star coins.
But upon the black market it had been bid up already to 6 million star coins!
From time to time a lot of them would appear, and still the supply could not meet the demand.
As to these black goods that sprang up all of a sudden, no one, naturally, was clear upon where they came from at all.
"Twenty Owl Dragon legions." Zhao Chen let out a long breath.
To lead in person some hundreds of thousands of interstellar warships, galloping upon the sea of stars, such was the thing that, when Zhao Chen had newly crossed over into this world.
He had not dared so much as to think of.
"You did say, in those days, that you were willing to stay with me three years only. Well, three years this way, three years that. And now the third three is nearly upon us besides. Have you still a mind to go?" Zhao Chen leaned suddenly to Charlotte's ear, and bantered with her in a low voice.