And at this very moment, given how things stood in the Owl Dragon Empire, the Owl Dragon Empire and the Devourer Civilization were both truly racing every minute.
Had anyone been able to see,
they would have known that in the Devourer Civilization's universe, interstellar fleet after interstellar fleet was mustering in haste.
At the same time countless war resources were being shipped to several neighboring star systems.
Those star systems were beyond doubt the forward star-system positions made ready for this emergency military operation.
Those war resources and supplies were what was needed to build universe-space fold-jump points,
and the supplies and resources the interstellar fleets would need for the expedition after.
Every interstellar warship was working flat out.
Above all the interstellar transports.
By now almost every interstellar transport of T3 grade and above in the whole Devourer Civilization had been sent here,
military or private, or belonging to whatever interstellar lord.
Now they were all under the Troll Monarch's command, and no one dared cross him.
For the Troll Monarch was overseeing these things in person.
It was a task the other two Sovereigns had given the Troll Monarch specially; the armored Sovereign had stressed, openly and between the lines, that if he could not even manage this,
he need not blame him for telling the Great Existence and having the divine punishment he deserved visited on him.
So this time the Troll Monarch truly gave it his all; he even moved a good deal of his own resources and strength, trying every way to finish these arrangements within the set time.
And once he saw anyone make a mistake or slip in this time,
the consequences were terrible indeed.
For instance, one interstellar transport, through an operating error, had an accident while unloading supplies that jammed the unloading berth it was at, wasting three hours.
After that, everyone aboard this interstellar transport, from the captain to the crew, was executed.
The Troll Monarch made no secret of it either.
He even had the bodies hung floating in an area beside the working lanes, as a warning to everyone!
And naturally that was not the only mistake.
After that the corpses there grew more and more; rumor had it their number reached a million!
In a war, the death of a million or so people was nothing at all.
But that was watching interstellar warships explode.
To see bodies floating there bare like this,
passersby who saw it could not help trembling at heart; some even had nightmares.
And so some ill effects appeared too.
The more frightened people were, the more often they made mistakes.
Of this the Troll Monarch naturally knew nothing now; to his mind, only under his warning of slaughter would this lot under him do their work obediently and efficiently.
On the other side,
in the Owl Dragon Empire's universe, there was true slaughter.
Around the seven[1] interstellar battlefields of the Devourer Civilization's remnants, every legion fleet worked with the others, forming meat grinder after meat grinder, and began reaping the Devourer Civilization interstellar warships here bit by bit.
At first these Devourer Civilization interstellar warships still had some fight in them,
and put up some resistance.
But as the astonishing numbers of the Owl Dragon interstellar hive-race joined, and the Owl Dragon interstellar hive-race's astonishing infector bugs appeared, they watched the interstellar warships that had been infected turn their guns on them.
In an instant it was like a huge mountain pressing on their chests.
And later, when they found more and more Sacred Elf Empire legion fleets appearing on the battlefields,
the Owl Dragon Empire even said outright on the surrender channel that the Sacred Elf Empire had announced it was joining this military operation to mop up the Devourer Civilization's fleet remnants in full.
There was a good deal of water in this; the Sacred Elf Empire had in fact sent only 5 million interstellar warships.
But the Devourer Civilization's remnants could not tell truth from falsehood in a short time, alas; they knew only that the Sacred Elf legion fleet groups were indeed growing in number.
And at the same time, under the Owl Dragon Empire's appeals to surrender, more and more of the Devourer Civilization's remnants chose to surrender.
With all these factors piling up, the fighting these Devourer Civilization fleet remnants did in this time was a shambles.
The number of interstellar warships they lost in a single day soon even passed the peak of the war before, breaking 1 million.
And that did not count the interstellar warships that surrendered.
And as the Devourer Civilization's remnant fleets dwindled, their resistance later grew more and more, and their interstellar warship losses would only rise step by step.
Every battlefield used every efficient means: storming, driving in to cut the battlefield apart, precise blanketing fire, taking the chief to take the bandits, and so on,
quickly wiping out the main fighting strength of the Devourer Civilization's fleet remnants.
Very soon the time came to the fifth day of the encirclement and annihilation.
The fighting areas of the seven battlefields had shrunk a great deal by comparison.
The Dragon Emperor Interstellar Command Ship · the bridge
"This is the fifth day of this military operation. In the first four days we've destroyed nearly 8 million enemy interstellar warships in all, and another 1 million-odd interstellar warships have surrendered. Of the seven battlefields, some are rather deadlocked, with the enemy resisting stubbornly. Some we've already split into several zones, and can clean up bit by bit within two days."
Zhao Chen looked at the interstellar war holo-table before him.
He said, pondering, "Three days left, and the enemy still has over 20 million interstellar warships. The enemy is working without a pause on its rescue plan now too. Can we destroy these 20 million interstellar warships within these three days?"
Lilith thought a moment, then said, going by the results of the simulation, "In the three days left, we expect to destroy 6 million interstellar warships, and persuade another 1 million interstellar warships to surrender. That way the enemy's remaining interstellar warships still able to fight will come in the end to around 10 million.[2] Just as we guessed before the operation, devouring all 30-million-odd of these interstellar warships within a week really is very hard."
Zhao Chen said with a light laugh, "Devouring 30-million-odd interstellar warships in a week is a bit hard on the teeth, true. But destroying 20-million-odd is already a fine result. And as it happens, it'll make the enemy choose, too. There are still 10 million interstellar warships here: will those three Devourer Civilization Sovereigns go on fighting us, or not? If they go on fighting, they'll truly be staking their Devourer Civilization on fighting us to the death. If they don't, then everything they've put into this war will have gone down the drain, perfectly."
There was a mocking look on Zhao Chen's face.