Chapter 565: 369: The Meat Grinder_1
“But you can’t, and you shouldn’t. You’re the commander of this war, so you don’t need to take responsibility for any other war. You should only consider the situation from this war’s perspective.”
“I am the sharpest blade and only strike the hardest bones. You just make your considerations without worrying about me. I cherish every opportunity, so I won’t deny your orders based on my personal considerations. After all, considering the war from the perspective of the future is my responsibility alone.”
Nora Camp’s voice choked a little, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Thank you for thinking about us.”
“I guess it’s for myself too. Relax, I have plenty of experience dying and even more experience surviving. It’s hard to kill me. Oh, women shouldn’t be commanders, still sentimental at times like this.”
“You’re so annoying.” Nora Camp cut off the communication.
Harrison Clark grinned.
But he didn’t smile happily. Just a moment later, his expression turned extremely serious, even struggling.
He received Nora Camp’s latest order as the supreme commander.
“Harrison Clark is not to engage in the battlefield immediately; prioritize observation and patrol, and be mindful of self-preservation.”
Nora Camp’s intentions were clear: she didn’t want him to go up there and risk his life unnecessarily.
Harrison Clark was undoubtedly strong.
But the Blade Mantis was even stronger.
After all, Harrison Clark was still using human-manufactured equipment, and his strength still fell within the realm of human comprehension.
But the strength the Blade Mantis had shown was beyond imagination.
“Sigh.”
Harrison Clark sighed, having initially hoped that his conversation with Nora would assure her in sending him headfirst into the battlefield against the Blade Mantis.
If there were a single human soldier who could struggle against the Blade Mantis, Harrison Clark believed that he’d be the only one.
But instead, he found himself on the outskirts, only able to watch helplessly as others went ahead.
Harrison Clark understood Nora Camp’s intentions.
As their strongest asset, he couldn’t easily die for nothing.
First, sacrifice some others to gather more intel and develop a feasible countermeasure; then, he would step in and finish the job.
Harrison Clark understood the logic but wasn’t used to the situation.
After hesitating for 0.1 seconds, he decided to obey the orders.
Words spoken were like water spilled: no taking them back.
Disobeying orders would be tantamount to denying Nora Camp’s authority as commander.
Harrison Clark glanced at the Blade Mantis far away, which had just shattered another battleship, igniting power slightly, trying to sneak closer.
“Fall back, maintain distance.”
A new simple order came through, the tone stern.
Harrison Clark sighed quietly and backed off again.
Needham Brown, along with over six thousand elite troops and nearly a million Caudron Army Corps Galaxy Warriors, continued to advance without pause.
Large-scale troop movements were ongoing in the battlefield ahead.
But it was too late.
The Great Wind Legion couldn’t hold out for long.
Perhaps less than two minutes, the Great Wind Legion was wiped out under the sweep of the white light beam and the pincer attack of the Blade Mantis.
With one battleship, fighter, and battle armor after another exploding in space, this area became enveloped in a giant fire cloud.
The flames continued to burn.
Stationary, Harrison Clark silently watched the sea of flames.
Although no sound could be heard in space, he seemed to experience auditory hallucinations.
A chorus of crackling noises echoed in his ears, as if countless drumbeats were striking his soul.
Flames were burning there.
But within the flames, countless comrades with names and faces disappeared.
He knew the names of some, but there were only a few.
Most people lived and died along this timeline without Harrison even knowing their names.
Nameless in life, forgotten in death.
With a rather sentimental thought, Harrison could consider those people nonexistent in past and future timelines.
For example, Neville Brown, who accompanied Mr. Green to the Second War Zone in military uniform and served as the political work instructor there.
He may have been in this world before, but he was obscure and therefore considered nonexistent.
This time, he left only his name in Harrison’s heart, and that was all.
Harrison Clark sighed deeply, helpless.
Although they thought they had the advantage, the new cards played by the Compound-Eyed Observer had turned the seemingly one-sided battlefield into a desperate meat grinder.
All at once, reinforcements from afar halted.
Since their rescue targets had been wiped out, it made no sense to continue the rescue operation.
What should they do next?
No one knew.
Human main combat forces were divided into eight major war zones and thirty-two legions.
The thirty-two legions were initially deployed in a formation that was meant to surround the Spherical Battleship perfectly.
But now, the invaders used their two new cards to effortlessly open a gaping hole in the encirclement.
Dense intelligence reports filled the commander’s channel non-stop.
All of these reports were crucial but not helpful at all.Intelligence one: The Blade Mantis moves too fast and its movement is too strange. The weapon system cannot lock on and cannot aim.
Intelligence two: The giant white beam is not real light, and its movement speed is much faster than that of light beams. It resembles the quantum entanglement that once caused great damage to humans and is now perfectly controlled by the protection layer within the battleships and armors.
Except for the above two, there is no other intelligence information.
But these two are also of no use.
The silence in the command channel lasted about two seconds.
Nora Camp issued new instructions through brainwave commands.
She requested the third and fourth war zones, comprising of a total of eight legions, to perform small-scale overall maneuvering to fill the gaps that had been opened up. This would prevent the Spherical Battleship from escaping with conventional movement methods.
At the same time, the nearby Snowflake Battleship array turned its firepower and began to use energy weapons for a cover-style probing attack on the position where the fire clouds were located.
Mr. Green suggested, “We should disperse our formations appropriately.”
Nora Camp decisively refused, “When Blade Mantis moved from the Spherical Battleship to our array just now, it covered a distance of nearly 1.8 million kilometers in an instant. When the enemy has such a speed, blindly dispersing will only lead to being defeated one by one.”
After she finished speaking, Mr. Green was temporarily deprived of his right to speak on the command channel.
In the midst of the great war, the situation changed rapidly, and there was no room for a second voice.
Next, two hundred million high-speed two-seat fighters from the nearby main ship turned into two roaring torrents of battle.
Since battleships seem too cumbersome in front of the Blade Mantis and have almost no power to fight back, but the number of Galaxy Warriors is insufficient and cannot form a suppressive battlefield effect.
So adopt a new combat plan, and try to use two large, flexible, and small combat units to see if they can win by quantity.
Soon, the first flame flower burst from the front end of the torrents formed by two-seater fighters.
Commanders felt both tense and relieved at this moment.
It is unclear whether the Compound-Eyed Observer is too confident or whether the Blade Mantis’ behavior logic is extremely simple, only following the principle of attacking the closest targets.
In either case, whoever is closer to them, they attack first.
The two torrents of human fighters began to explode continuously.
One set of parameters after another was analyzed.
The cutting power of Blade Mantis’s Grand Unified Force arm, the capability of the Blade Mantis’s conventional movement without using jump maneuver, the spread ability of the sprayed light beams, and so on…
Each new parameter represents a new sense of oppression.
Harrison Clark observed the battlefield visually while calculating simulations in his heart.
Ignoring the killing power of the Blade Mantis, its movement mode is also remarkable.
The acceleration is so intense and terrifying that, in the blink of an eye, it reaches 100,000 kilometers per second, one-third the speed of light.
So when the Blade Mantis destroyed the battleship with that brief flicker, it actually danced around the battleship countless circles and returned to the original point.
With such an enemy, almost no combat unit on the human side can compete.
Bad news followed one after another.
The Spherical Battleship, which was originally unable to move during the siege, began to move.
As if buzzing in space, the Spherical Battleship floated quickly in the void, chasing after the place where the Blade Mantis and the fighter cluster connected
The human fleet had no choice but to further increase their firepower output in an attempt to suppress it back down.
But in the next instant, the Spherical Battleship began to counterattack.
The white light beams swept towards the surrounding fleets that were attacking from all sides.
At the same time, the intelligence system instantly monitored that more than 10,000 Black Hole bombs had floated out from beneath the surface of the Spherical Battleship.
The Spherical Battleship was not pushed back by the human firepower, but its speed slowed down slightly, still floating forward with extreme determination.
Nora Camp took a deep breath, “Fourth War Zone Commander Laurence Danielle!”
“Yes!”
“You lead the Fourth War Zone with full force advances, with only one mission, to hold back the Spherical Battleship. Your defensive area will be filled up by the reserve army.”
“Yes!”
Numerous battleships, transport ships, hundreds of thousands of Galaxy Warriors, and thousands of Fortress Ships of the Fourth War Zone continued charging forward.
The rear reserve fleet followed up simultaneously.
These newly enlisted warriors, who were once civilians, stepped onto the battlefield for the first time.
Nora Camp looked back at the rear and sighed.
The energy charging of the Stellar Giant Cannon was not yet complete.
The previous delay had caused the wasted opportunity of one round of simultaneous firing, which was a pity.
Nora Camp issued an order to Laurence, but how to execute it was no longer her responsibility. Lauren would decide for herself.
Three seconds later, Lauren Danni Fox had considered it carefully in her heart.
“All forces charge separately! Random movement, fire empty weapons, and then collide!”
At this stage of the war, any tricks are pointless. Now it is time to rely on hard combat skills.
In the next instant, all the combat units of the Fourth War Zone began to move, charging forward with a tremendous force.
Various large, medium, and small-sized live ammunition weapons were fired one after another.
However, at this moment, numerous combat units rose densely from the Spherical Battleship.
Nearly 10 million Dragonfly Fighters and nearly 10,000 Eight-legged Beetles flew up from below.
Harrison Clark: “F***!”
The Black Hole bombs exploded first.
Although the Fourth War Zone fleet doing cluster charges tried their best to avoid it, many of them still got caught in the explosion.
Immediately afterwards, the Fourth War Zone forces engaged in close combat with the newly emerged Dragonfly Fighters and Eight-legged Beetles from the Spherical Battleship.
Explosions continued without stopping, one after another.
However, including small fighters and functional armed forces, the total of over 100 million combat units in the Fourth War Zone did not slow down at all, charging headlong like a torrent of iron.
In the rear of the battlefield, more Black Hole bombs exploded, either actively or passively triggered.
The space battlefield was in chaos, jumbled beyond order.