By Grandfather Deer King's explanation.
When he had seen the Dragon Emperor and told him of the Demon Race and the threat they posed.
The Dragon Emperor had shown no very great surprise.
And had told Grandfather Deer King that in fact he had long known of the Demon Race's existence and of their dangerousness.
Long before the Machine Race's withdrawal, the Dragon Emperor had sent small scout fleets across the region the Machine Race controlled, attempting to find other interstellar civilizations to cooperate with and to obtain more advanced technology.
After sending out some dozen such scout fleets, one at last returned.
But brought back a terrible piece of news.
On the far side of the region the Machine Race controlled lay the territory of the fabled Demon Race; and the Demon Race of the present were no longer the Demon Race who had had contact with the Galactic Alliance in the days of history.
They were developing and employing a kind of evil technology.
Which was precisely that technology Grandfather Deer King had learned of, using living bodies as starship fuel.
At the time the Dragon Emperor perceived that a Demon Race possessed of such technology must assuredly be exceedingly aggressive.
Happily, in those days the Machine Race stood as a gulf between the two, and served on the contrary as the Warhammer's line of protection.
But afterward… who could have thought that the Machine Race would withdraw, and that the region they left would open, precisely between the Demon Race and the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth, one narrow and hidden route?
At the first instant of the Machine Race's withdrawal, the Dragon Emperor, anxious over the Demon Race threat, had sent men to investigate quietly, and had discovered that route long since.
And had perceived that the Demon Race threat might descend upon the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth at any moment.
"Then why did the Dragon Emperor not make this news public, but seal it away instead?" Zhao Chen, hearing this story, was puzzled.
"Can it be that the Dragon Emperor judged that spreading this news would produce a bad effect?" Lilith offered her conjecture from across the video window.
Charlotte nodded. "Just so; that was near enough his thinking. The Dragon Emperor at the time quietly raised a staff department against the Demon Race, and ran many simulated campaigns. But the results showed that even were the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth as it stands to give its whole strength, it would be no match for the Demon Race. And besides, if the news of the Demon Race threat were made public. There was a high probability of producing unsettled feeling among the people of certain regions, and a spirit of panic, which would spread to affect yet more regions."
Hearing this out, Zhao Chen understood that Dragon Emperor's thinking at the time.
It is as though you were a president upon a planet, and you alone knew that this planet was about to meet its end, and that there was hardly a way to survive it.
Then at that point, do you choose to announce the news outright and bear the whole train of panic and riot and popular upheaval that follows?
Or do you choose to conceal it, and let the people face the end without knowing it, while you gather a small band and seek a way?
It is a choice between two.
And the Dragon Emperor chose the latter.
"But the Dragon Emperor can hardly have been content to sit and await death? He must have had some plan," Zhao Chen returned.
"He had. The Dragon Emperor had a plan. And his plan was already being carried out — only, most unluckily, we happened to have stopped it." Lilith spoke up.
Zhao Chen woke to it all at once.
"The Dragon Emperor meant to unify the Warhammer, to break the Warhammer's original old order of a federal character, and to establish a new Warhammer controlled by the Dragon-folk tribe — so as to unify all the Warhammer's resources and meet the Demon Race threat to come."
Charlotte nodded, and went on, "Just so. After that staff department of the Dragon Emperor's had run its last simulation, the only path with a chance of victory was this: before the Demon Race threat arrived— to develop the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth's potential thoroughly! But under the Warhammer Interstellar Commonwealth's former alliance system, agreement was very hard to reach — just as with this Warhammer coalition they raised now. So the Dragon Emperor determined to establish a Warhammer he thoroughly commanded himself, and then to mobilize every resource within the Warhammer, open an age of rapid development, and carry out an armaments mobilization. Within the Dragon-folk tribe's top-secret archive there is already a plan for it. By report, in that plan the Dragon Emperor even meant to set the new Warhammer's future military budget at 80% of annual revenue, with a full war mobilization at need!"
An 80% military budget!
What does that signify?
Apart from a case like Zhao Chen's — a small territory, few subjects, an enterprise only lately begun upon the strength of a legion fleet—
no other empire could possibly put so vast a share of its annual revenue into military spending.
By Zhao Chen's understanding, the Starlight Empire's military expenditure had formerly stood at 30%; the Holy Radiance Empire's was lower, at only 20% — though that did not mean the Holy Radiance Empire's military spending was small, but that the Holy Radiance Empire's annual revenue base was high.
And the Warhammer's military share at the time had reached 40%.
And now a plan for the future raised it outright to 80%.
Which meant the Dragon Emperor would make the Warhammer a military empire — an interstellar empire standing ready for war at every hour.
This move is a walk upon a tightrope; at the least carelessness, such a purely military empire will fall to pieces.
But it has to be said, this was the Dragon Emperor's most effective means of facing the Demon Race threat — short, perhaps, of moving the whole race elsewhere.
But short of the very last extremity, who is willing to give up all he has here?
"Then how did the Dragon Emperor come to die?" Zhao Chen asked; after all this talk, he had still not learned clearly how the Dragon Emperor had gone.
"Half a day ago, beyond the Dragon-folk tribe's northern territory, a Demon Race fleet appeared. You remember those five Dragon-folk fleet groups you mentioned before, whose whereabouts were unknown? To guard against the worst, the Dragon Emperor had long since disposed those five Dragon-folk fleet groups beyond the northern territory. Upon discovering the Demon Race fleet's appearance, the Dragon Emperor attempted to ambush it; if he could defeat the Demon Race fleet's vanguard and then stopper the mouth of that route— then in the fighting with the Demon Race to come, he would hold the position of advantage," Charlotte explained.
Zhao Chen nodded. There was no fault in that.
So those five fleet groups whose whereabouts were unknown had been waiting there.
"But the result at the last was past anyone's expectation. The first Demon Race fleet to appear numbered only 30,000 and more — about the scale of one Dragon-folk fleet group. And that with the Dragon Emperor leading his fleets in person in an ambush and encirclement operation. In the end the Demon Race fleet struck back, and they were near enough destroyed to the last man; not a few interstellar warships escaped back. And the flagship the Dragon Emperor stood upon was destroyed by Demon Race interstellar warships." Charlotte said it in a low voice.
Zhao Chen was startled. "Five Dragon-folk fleet groups ambushing 30,000 Demon Race ships — that is 150,000 interstellar warships ambushing 30,000. And destroyed to the last? How did they fight this battle?"
"By the intelligence sent back, the Demon Race interstellar fleets are, without exception, T3-grade and T4-grade interstellar warships — and in the matter of T4-grade interstellar warships above all, the number is astonishing. Of those 30,000 interstellar warships, a full 3,000 are T4 warships; the fleet ratio reaching an astonishing 10 to one."