"In the name of the gods—"
"For His Majesty!"
"For the kingdom!"
"Hold at all costs!"
Thick smoke choked the river dike as raging flames consumed blood and corpses.
A chiliarch drenched in blood roared with all the breath left in his lungs, swinging his saber to urge his men forward and fill the mangled breach in their defensive line.
Even with both legs blown off, he never stopped shouting.
All because the stronghold beneath him was the City of Abundance.
It was not merely the breadbasket of the Lion Kingdom's central heartland, a divine blessing granted to their realm—it was also the final barrier barring the Falcons from the Lion Capital!
Rewind several hours.
The Falcon Kingdom's 2nd Myriad had finally finished digging their fortifications. Then, catching everyone off guard, they immediately launched a ferocious assault against the City of Abundance's garrison from both the west and the north.
The Lion Kingdom had no intention of waiting around for the slaughter.
Led by Prince Winter, the Scarab Myriad stationed there joined with the local militia and mounted a fierce, desperate defense.
Cast-iron cannons, obsolete mortars, piecemeal howitzers—everything was dragged to the front line.
All to halt the enemy's advance—
Even if it only bought them two seconds!
The roar of aircraft propellers screeched overhead, raining wave after wave of death down upon the dike. Yet even that failed to stop the artillery on the embankment from spewing ferocious fire beyond their bunkers.
The defenders in the stronghold were poured in by the thousands, company after company.
The siege forces outside were no different.
Even with absolute air superiority;
Even with artillery batteries in the rear pounding away without pause;
Even after wave upon wave of the dike's defenders were wiped out;
They still could not cross that metal-clad dam.
The battle ground to a brutal stalemate.
Both sides saw only red, discarding all humanity and faith to butcher one another in the most primitive, cruel manner imaginable, striving only to bury more blistering shrapnel into the skulls and chests of their former brethren.
The impregnable river dike had become a churning meat grinder.
Scattering fragmentation and concussive shockwaves rippled outward in endless concentric rings, sending bloody waves rolling across the golden fields of wheat.
Sitting in his fighter's cockpit, Akante looked out the canopy and couldn't help clicking his tongue.
Not because of the gruesome slaughter, but because of those golden fields.
In his homeland—beside a riverbed that had nearly run completely dry—he had never seen such vast, breathtaking fields of wheat.
If they could conquer this place, his parents, his brothers and sisters, even his future children and grandchildren... none of them would ever have to endure hunger again.
True, it meant the conquered people would eke out a miserable living in poverty and hardship, and it meant those people would become slaves, but he saw nothing wrong with that.
This world had always been a jungle where the weak were meat for the strong. Survival of the fittest was natural law.
His Royal Highness the Prince had said that the Falcon Kingdom's oases were withering away, that they were bearing the Great Desert's curse on behalf of all the desert kings. Yet those kings merely stood by and watched their agony, preferring to dump out milk and bread rather than share even a fraction of the gods' blessings with them.
The decadent kings had betrayed their oaths and their faith; they were unworthy of the Spirit of the Desert's grace.
If the people of the Falcon Kingdom wanted to survive in this world, they had to fight—fight on and on—
Until their dying breath!
Akante gripped the control stick, smoothly pulling up into a climb, preparing to take his mounted 10 mm machine gun into another dive against the artillery bunkers along the dike.
Just then, the edge of his vision caught a string of black dots against the sun to his flank.
That direction...
The east?
The glare blinded him to what those specks were, leaving him to wonder for a second if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Yet the instincts honed through countless engagements spurred him to an instant decision: he aborted his next dive, hauled back on the stick, and climbed toward the clouds.
His judgment was vindicated a heartbeat later, saving him from the opening strafe.
His wingmen were not so lucky.
In the span of a few breaths, the dots swept close. Sunlight illuminated shark, tiger, and devil nose art as thick tongues of fire erupted toward them.
There wasn't a single enemy airfield anywhere nearby, and the Falcon Kingdom pilots had never imagined an aerial ambush. They were caught completely flat-footed.
In that split second, three Eagle-type propeller planes were shredded into sieves, their wings peppered with holes as they plummeted toward the earth trailing thick black smoke.
Though the remaining twenty-two aircraft managed to evade in time, they were seized by the tail and hammered relentlessly, swiftly losing another three planes.
Watching his comrades go down, Akante's face twisted in horror. He flipped on the radio and screamed:
"Bandits!"
"Cease ground attacks! Break and engage!"
The remaining nineteen aircraft broke formation immediately, climbing and banking to either flank to shake the pursuers glued to their tails.
Yet their opponents possessed superb piloting skills, moving with tight coordination and rigorous discipline.
Watching the "little chick" weaving through an evasive snake maneuver inside his crosshairs, Not Professional Anti-Mantou gave a snort through his pig nose, locked tightly onto the bandit's rear hemisphere, and slammed the throttle down.
"Trying to run?"
*If I let you get away—*
*I'll write my name backward!*
Keying his radio switch, he bellowed at the top of his lungs:
"Spread out and hunt! One each, tear 'em to shreds!"
A chorus of replies echoed through the comm channel.
"On it, Brother Mantou!"
"Copy that, Brother Mantou!"
Not Professional Anti-Mantou was so infuriated his plane almost swerved.
"Fuck!"
"How many times do I have to tell you? The name's Anti-Mantou!"
Twenty-five unidentified propeller fighters held doggedly onto their tails, while five peeled off to bracket them from the front.
The dogfight escalated instantly to a white-hot pitch.
Although caught off guard at first, the Falcon Kingdom pilots recovered quickly. Relying on the agile maneuverability of their Eagle-types, they engaged the newcomers in a swirling horizontal turn fight.
Without air-to-air missiles, the engagement dissolved entirely into close-quarters knife-fighting.
Both sides traded scissor rolls and barrel maneuvers, grappling for fleeting windows to fire.
Streams of orange tracer rounds poured through the sky like sparks flying off an anvil, forging the doom of every soul caught in the furnace.
Sweat beaded across Akante's forehead. His hands clutched the control stick in a death grip, his teeth clamped so hard his gums nearly bled.
He could tell the enemy planes weren't exceptionally powerful, but the pilots flew with terrifying ferocity and an astonishingly fanatical will to fight.
Some of their hair-raising maneuvers made him wonder if they were utterly oblivious to the danger, or simply didn't give a damn about their own lives.
Were they pilots from the Lion Kingdom?
Or the Alliance, hundreds of kilometers away?
Before the clash in the sky had reached a verdict, the arrival of the Alliance air wing had already tipped the battle on the ground.
The scales of victory had been tilting toward the attackers, but with air superiority lost, that tilted balance was forcefully wrestled back.
The Falcon Kingdom's 2nd Myriad, tasked with the breakthrough, soon found itself bogged down in bitter fighting.
In stark contrast, when the defenders on the dike saw friendly aircraft providing close air support, their morale soared, erupting into deafening cheers.
"Reinforcements!"
"Alliance reinforcements! It's the Alliance!"
"Ooooh!"
"By the Spirit of the Desert! We're saved!"
It wasn't just the soldiers who saw hope. Inside the command bunker, the officers' faces lit up with joy, sweeping away the gloom that had weighed on them just minutes before.
The Alliance's reinforcements had finally arrived!
Even if it was only their air force, it was an enormous help!
The only thing the officers couldn't fathom was where on earth these planes had come from.
***
At the front line.
Behind a bombproof bunker, Prince Winter gripped a pair of binoculars and peered through an observation slit in the sandbag wall, gazing out at the smoke-choked battlefield in the distance with tightly furrowed brows.
Though the surprise appearance of the Alliance aircraft had stemmed their collapse, the situation remained far from rosy.
With the Legion's backing, the Falcon Kingdom had spent over a decade preparing for this campaign. Both their equipment and the quality of their troops far outclassed the Lion Kingdom's.
The unyielding rumble of artillery in the distance proved it.
Those men hadn't retreated just because they lost air support; if anything, their assault had grown even more violent.
The Scarab Myriad under his command had already suffered twenty percent casualties, while the local militia and freshly trained conscripts had been decimated.
Blood had stained the dike red, spilling into the irrigation ditches below...
"...If this war of attrition drags on, even if we hold this stronghold, our strength will be gutted," a noble serving as a staff officer remarked grimly at Prince Winter's side.
Another officer clenched his fists and cursed.
"Those bastards... It's like there's no end to them!"
"We must hold this ground no matter what. It is the kingdom's final rampart. We have no other choice."
Lowering his binoculars slightly, Prince Winter paused, his voice flat and resolute.
"If they are so bent on taking this fortress, let them bleed dry on our dike!"
Right at that moment, billows of dust erupted along the fortress's northwestern flank—and surging out from behind that dust came an unstoppable torrent of steel!
Around fifty Conqueror 10 heavy tanks tore into the battlefield.
Neither attacker nor defender understood what was happening when this unforeseen force first appeared.
Only when the tanks drew within range and suddenly opened fire on the besiegers outside the stronghold did the defenders on the dike realize these were friendly forces!
Pennants fluttered from the tanks' turrets, bearing the coat of arms of the Honey Badger royal family.
An officer directing the defense from a forward trench shouted in delirious joy:
"It's the Honey Badger Kingdom's Restoration Army!"
"They've come to help us!"
With fresh allies entering the fray, the morale of the Lion Kingdom's soldiers surged to its peak. Bolts cycled and shells loaded with twice the speed.
A decimated company of several hundred men managed to unleash the volume of fire of a full-strength regiment.
Squeezed between an armored flank attack and suddenly redoubled frontal resistance, the Falcon Kingdom's 2nd Myriad took devastating casualties.
Meanwhile, the air battle reached its conclusion.
Save for a handful of aircraft fleeing westward, virtually the entire Falcon air squadron had been wiped out.
The scales of victory tipped decisively toward the defenders.
The towering dike stood firm amid the wheat fields and rolling smoke.
Seeing that the day was lost, the Falcon Kingdom's frontline commander had no choice but to order a retreat, no matter how bitter the pill tasted.
Any hesitation or lingering at this point would leave few survivors from the entire myriad, destroying the unit's formation entirely...
***
Thirty kilometers away, at the Falcon Kingdom's military camp.
The entire compound was packed with wounded.
Looking across the ground covered in stretchers and listening to the agonized wails of the injured, Prince William felt fury burning in his eyes, his fists clenching uncontrollably.
He could not understand why the Legion had ordered an assault.
Hadn't they agreed to wipe that stronghold off the map with a nuclear bomb?
Why send his men into a meat grinder they could never hope to breach?
He didn't mind the sons of the Falcon Kingdom dying to expand the royal realm, but these casualties could have been avoided!
They were entirely pointless!
Spotting a Legion officer walking toward him, he swallowed his anger and stepped forward, his voice lowered to a harsh hiss.
"Where is the bomb? Where is your nuclear weapon?"
Looking at William's heaving chest, the officer merely brought an index finger to his lips, tapping them once in a shushing gesture to signal that he should hold his tongue.
Seeing the gesture, Prince William knew this was neither the time nor the place to throw a tantrum. Taking a deep breath to rein in his temper, he spoke in a more measured tone.
"We need that weapon. I have already made all the necessary mental preparations... I don't understand what you are still hesitating for!"
"If you are worried about stoking the hatred of the people in Sunset Province, I will bear their wrath on your behalf and help you crush those vermin—"
The officer raised his right hand, cutting short his tirade, and looked at him steadily.
"Mr. William, the adversary we are currently facing has far exceeded our initial expectations. They adjust their tactics according to ours, and naturally, we do the same. Battlefield conditions change in the blink of an eye. What makes you think a plan can ever keep pace with reality?"
Prince William blinked, his eyes narrowing.
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing in particular."
The officer had no intention of offering further explanations to this nominal marshal. Brushing past him, he walked toward a nearby command tent.
Yet as he reached the entrance flap, he paused and glanced back over his shoulder.
"Never try to second-guess Lord Griffin's mind. He has his own plans."
"Do your duty, and we will lead you to victory in this war."
Leaving behind those words, he parted the tent flap and stepped inside. Approaching a radio, he slipped on the headset hanging from the console and delivered his report on the frontline situation.
"The 1st Flight Squadron was intercepted by enemy aircraft. We lost twenty-one planes..."
"Resistance from the City of Abundance garrison exceeded projections. The armored units lost from Outpost 530 reappeared on the northern flank of the spearhead. The 2nd Myriad suffered heavy casualties, and today's offensive has been forced to a premature conclusion..."
Although it was a litany of bad news, the voice on the other end remained calm.
Almost as if none of it was a surprise.
Pausing, the officer continued in a tone brimming with respect and reverent awe:
"Furthermore, the big fish has taken the bait. They couldn't help themselves after all. Everything is unfolding just as you anticipated..."
***
Meanwhile, amidst the battered ruins of the City of Abundance, a gate opened in the towering dike to admit the tank column that had come to their aid.
Soldiers lining the road stared warily at the Legion-pattern armor, their eyes filled with deep caution.
Even though the tanks flew the banner of the Honey Badger royal house, the terror etched into their memories made them instinctively suspicious.
What was more—
Not everyone was fond of these "Honey Badgers" who had brought trouble to their doorstep.
Prince Winter stood in the middle of the road, flanked by his personal guards and senior officers, to personally greet this allied force that had arrived at the eleventh hour.
The hatch atop the lead tank popped open, and a heavily bearded man stood up, raising a hand to signal the column to halt.
Seeing Yade clamber down from the hull, Prince Winter's impassive expression twitched with a flicker of emotion.
"You actually came?"
"I did."
Stepping up to Prince Winter, Yade took his hand in a firm grip, casting a glance over the officers behind him.
A few averted their eyes; others stared back blankly... Grateful expressions accounted for half of them at most.
That was only natural.
Even now, many in the Lion royal court believed that if they simply handed over the Honey Badger royal family, the Falcon Kingdom would return their captured lands.
And even among those who harbored no such naive illusions, plenty blamed the Honey Badgers for dragging war to their doorstep. Had they refused asylum, the Falcon Kingdom might have cooled down after seizing Oasis No. 3 and negotiated, rather than pushing further east.
Yade knew full well that the intelligence mishap during the battle for Outpost 530 had been someone's dirty trick from behind the scenes. If not for their allies arriving ahead of schedule, he would have died out on those dunes.
Though he longed to drag the culprit out and beat them bloody, he knew this was not the time to settle old scores.
The bigger picture came first.
Casually pulling his gaze back, Yade looked naturally at Prince Winter.
"What was the deal with those planes?"
"Alliance aircraft."
"Do they have an airfield out here?" Yade's brow arched slightly. Clearly, his decision to rush here had not been based on orders from the Alliance, but on his own tactical assessment.
Prince Winter shook his head.
"I don't know. They appeared out of nowhere. We have them to thank—without their cover, we never would have held out until you arrived..."
A complicated expression crept across his face as he spoke.
When the Honey Badger royals first fled here into exile, he had been the most vocal opponent of sheltering them. He never imagined that one day, he would owe his life to these very people.
His Adam's apple bobbed as he continued:
"...Thank you for extending a hand. Though I cannot speak for my entire kingdom, from this day forth, every man standing here owes you a debt of gratitude."
Yade cracked a grin and patted the old man on the arm.
"No need for such talk. We're allies fighting on the same front line..."
Even though he had resolved to let bygones be bygones for now, he couldn't help stressing the words "same front line," the subtle barb clear to everyone present.
Several officers looked uncomfortable, awkwardly shifting their gaze away.
They knew full well they had played dirty before—whether it was the botched intelligence, or withdrawing the northern guerillas and passing the buck of covering friendly forces onto the Honey Badger Restoration Army.
As for Prince Winter, not a ripple showed on his heavily lined face; he merely offered a faint smile.
"You are right. We are allies on the same front line. But I will remember this favor nonetheless."
Recalling something, he reached into his tunic, pulled out a letter, and handed it to Yade.
"...By the way, here is a letter from your brother and sister. They are in Dawn City with the Alliance. Our diplomatic delegation happened to be there as well, so they brought it along."
Hearing news of his siblings, Yade's eyes brightened with pleasant surprise. Grinning broadly, he tore open the envelope Prince Winter handed him.
Inside were two separate letters.
One was from his younger brother—the acting king—and the other was from his sister, Princess Afni.
Saving the best for last, he opened his brother's letter first.
Skipping past the opening pleasantries, he read straight from the middle.
[...I trust you are well. There is no need to worry about our safety. The Administrator of the Alliance is an enlightened leader. Though our paths differ, he respects our faith and our choices.]
[Once the war concludes, the people of the Honey Badger Kingdom will be free to choose their way of life, so long as we pledge to treat the descendants of the survivors with kindness and forever stand on the side of the masses. I do not fully grasp every concept he speaks of, but I believe I have obtained what I sought, and the price asked is not hard to accept.]
[We both agree that peaceful development is the only way out of chaos. Under this consensus, we shall be partners.]
Yade smirked.
That brat's writing was as stuffy and pedantic as ever. Just say you're safe and be done with it—why beat around the bush and bury the key points beneath a mountain of nonsense?
"Hmph, I haven't recognized you as king yet."
Still, the throne could wait for later as well.
What mattered now was driving out the invaders.
Driving them out of the Honey Badger Kingdom, and driving them out of Sunset Province.
He opened his sister's letter.
Unlike his irritating brother, Afni's letter was far more pleasant to read.
Her handwriting was neat and graceful, her tone polite and natural, untouched by the pompous habits of court bureaucrats. She simply reassured him of her well-being as family and shared tidbits of her recent life:
Her days in Dawn City, her work organizing books in the library, and a new friend she had made—a young girl named Shuang Xue.
A warm smile spread across Yade's face as his calloused thumb stroked his thick beard.
When Samer first suggested marrying their lovely little sister off to a heathen—and sending her far beyond Sunset Province, no less—he, as the eldest brother, had vehemently opposed it.
Beyond the oases lay utter wasteland; what could an uncivilized realm far removed from the grace of the Spirit of the Desert be like?
He had heard that the people there went hungry and half-naked, that they swapped children to eat just to survive, and that marauders followed savage rites, boiling their captives in cauldrons like beasts.
Merchants from the east had painted Dawn City as a shining oasis of civilization amidst the dark, but it was still rooted in barbarous soil.
Even if there were differences, how different could it really be?
Yade hadn't believed that fairy-tale picture for a second. It was only after learning that the Alliance had defeated the Legion-backed Bone Chewer tribe that he had begrudgingly consented to Samer's plan.
The decision had weighed on his conscience ever since.
After all, it felt like using his sister as a sacrificial pawn.
A victory bought at the expense of family felt shameful, even in triumph.
Yet seeing how happy she sounded eased much of his unease.
At least according to her letter, life there wasn't nearly as awful as he had pictured.
For someone to govern a realm with such order and prosperity, the Administrator's son had to be someone worthy of trust.
As he read on, however, Yade's expression grew strange.
Just like his brother's letter, the latter half of her message was entirely about the Alliance's Administrator.
He conceded that the man was a figure of note. Considering their future relations, understanding the ruler of half a province was essential.
But did she really need to dwell on him so much?
If nothing else, he hoped she would mention a word or two about her fiancé, so her big brother could at least know if the fellow was a decent sort.
Yet the letter didn't say a single word about him.
And starting from somewhere in the middle, the tone took a bizarre turn.
[...The Alliance Administrator is deeply beloved by the local residents, and I can tell that their adoration comes from the heart, not out of blind obedience or fear of authority.]
[In the eyes of the youth who commands his personal guard, I see an unvarnished loyalty; in the eyes of a girl working at the guild, I see an admiration untainted by desire... It makes one envious, doesn't it? Though I must admit, it makes me a little jealous as well.]
Noticing the shift in Yade's expression, Prince Winter blinked and asked with concern:
"Is something the matter?"
"Nothing."
Yade muttered with a deeply conflicted grimace, folding both letters and stuffing them into his pocket.
He decided he needed to have a serious talk with his sister... and with that damn fool of a brother, Samer.
That idiot was playing an extremely dangerous game.
Of course, that would have to wait until they drove out the invaders.
Yet more than apprehension or wariness, what crowded his muddled brain at this moment was a bizarre storm of emotions he couldn't even put a name to.
And the culprit behind it all was the final line just above her signature:
[I think I might be in love with him.]
***
High above, in a cloudless azure sky.
The colossal *Heart of Steel* swept majestically forward, its wings spread wide, bank upon bank of synchronized propellers churning the air.
Trailing close behind its stern, planes caught up one by one, touching down in succession onto the steel flight deck that stretched hundreds of meters long.
The entire airship was a floating aircraft carrier.
Turning the *Heart of Steel* into an airborne carrier had been Mosquito's wild brainwave, though the realization of the project had fallen not to Goblin Technology, but to the Enterprise's Ideal Group and the Alliance's No. 81 Steel Mill.
While airship carriers had been an evolutionary dead end in Earth's history—the tragic fates of the *Akron* and the *Macon* serving as bloody proof—the rules of a "game" were different.
The *Heart of Steel* did not rely on helium or hydrogen for buoyancy. Its lift was generated by the antigravity systems housed in the corvette's core, completely eliminating worries about turbulent collisions or wings shredding gas cells.
And in practice, that proved true.
The *Heart of Steel* was rock-solid in flight.
Better yet, the deck armor running down the airship's centerline was as flat as a highway. Because the armor sat directly above the keel, it was clear of anti-aircraft mounts, requiring no awkward clearances to open up a runway.
All pilots had to do was avoid slamming into the 400 mm mortar mounted on the bow.
A runway several hundred meters long offered ample room for propeller aircraft to land, and the airship's own cruising speed imparted initial velocity to launch planes over a much shorter run.
While it demanded exceptional skill and nerves of steel from the pilots, scraping together two or three dozen "ace pilots" was well within the Alliance's capabilities.
Climbing out of his cockpit, the pig-headed fellow rested his hand against the wing and sighed with satisfaction.
"Whew... Big birds really are the best to fly. It's been ages since I touched one of these little buggers."
It was a pity that "little sparrow" had slipped away in the end.
Still, a win was a win.
Brother Ice and Fire, who regularly flew as his tail gunner, gave a chuckle.
"How many did you bag?"
Not Professional Anti-Mantou twitched his big floppy ears and grinned sheepishly.
"Heh, best not talk about it, best not talk about it..."
Nearby, beside a W-2 ground-attack craft.
Feng Qing hopped down from her cockpit with an "oof."
Tugging off her shrapnel-torn leather flight helmet, she gave her bird's-nest hair a vigorous shake.
A string of bullet holes scarred the canopy frame, and the draft whistling through had left the left side of her face half-numb. She had stood there making muffled "aba aba" noises for quite a while before feeling returned.
Having just climbed down from her own plane, Gui Gui crept over curiously and inspected the edge of the cockpit canopy.
"What are you looking for?" Feng Qing blinked at her.
Gui Gui scratched her head with an embarrassed giggle.
"Where's the poem?"
At those words, Feng Qing's face flushed red as a lantern, her toes curling inside her boots.
Flailing like an angry cat, she grabbed Gui Gui's shoulders and shoved her away from the aircraft.
"Go away, go away! I don't know what you're talking about, I don't know who you're looking for!"
"Huh?! Don't you remember? That line about—"
"Aaaaah! Stop, stop, don't you dare recite it!"
Their playful bickering drifted across the deck toward the gangway leading below. The NPC ground crew tasked with stowing the aircraft into the hangar gazed at the pilots with profound admiration.
Exuberant and full of energy, none of them looked like people who had just walked away from a razor-thin brush with death—it was as if they had merely returned from a grand banquet.
That fearless courage and cheerful disregard for death alone commanded their absolute reverence.
On the other side of the flight deck.
Commander Spring walked up to Mosquito, who had just climbed down from his plane, and glanced around.
"Where's Luo Yu? How come he's not with you?"
"Him?" Mosquito grinned. "The Administrator gave him another job."
Hearing that, Commander Spring's expression turned subtly knowing.
"...Looks like we won't be seeing him for a few days, then."
***
Meanwhile, on the bridge beneath the flight deck.
Standing beside Chu Guang, Vannus pondered in silence with knitted brows for a long time before suddenly speaking up:
"I still don't understand."
Chu Guang replied pleasantly, "Don't understand what?"
Vannus turned to him. "You knew this was Griffin's trap. Why bring the airship to the front lines?"
While they had basically pinned down the deployment site and strike profile of the nuclear warhead, Boulder City alone might not be able to stop it.
Not to mention, their mutual trust had not yet reached the point of unreserved intelligence sharing.
Chu Guang smiled faintly and said in a calm voice:
"A thief can wait a thousand days to strike, but you can't guard against a thief for a thousand days."
Vannus blinked, unfamiliar with the old proverb. "What does that mean?"
Chu Guang answered concisely, "Exactly what it says."
"Since this Sword of Damocles can drop at any moment, we might as well let it fall today."
"You can think of it as turning the tables, or playing them at their own game—entrapment, if you will."
Tactical clashes were collisions of steel and blood.
Strategy, on the other hand, was an invisible war of psychological gambits and covert maneuvering.
For now, the initiative in this game rested in Griffin's hands, but that did not mean victory was assured for him.
Whether he seized upon this apparent Alliance vulnerability to deploy the warhead to the Lost Valley airfield as planned,
Or turned the tables by dropping the warhead directly on the City of Abundance to cut his ally's losses,
The Alliance was fully prepared to respond to either move.
The Death Corps had rendezvoused with the Alliance diplomatic delegation and was en route to the Great Rift Valley. The Legion's northern supply line would soon be severed, while the Alliance's own logistics network was taking shape, with roads and rails standing ready.
If Griffin deduced this, he would inevitably accelerate the tempo of the war. Otherwise, even if his vassals won battle after battle in the field, they would ultimately collapse under disastrous logistics.
Therefore, he was bound to choose a more aggressive gambit—and he was bound to move up the date of the decisive clash.
The Skeleton Corps had already set out from the Alliance's western frontier: thirty-five late-model tanks and sixty light and heavy trucks were advancing in force toward Lost Valley east of Oasis No. 4, ready to seize the airfield there.
And the Storm Corps, accompanying Chu Guang to relieve their allies, stood fully mobilized inside the airship.
Although the marine force carried aboard amounted to only a single thousand-man regiment, every one of them was an elite.
These players' levels and individual combat prowess might not rank at the very peak of the Alliance, but the Storm Corps was easily the most well-rounded unit across all metrics.
In both organizational discipline and operational doctrine, they resembled a professional military force more than any other corps.
If the Burning Corps was the Alliance's spear,
Then the Storm Corps was its shield!
Gazing at his handsome reflection in the panoramic viewport, Chu Guang took a deep breath and murmured in an undertone:
"...Come on, then."
All his pieces were in position.
Now—
It was the other man's turn to play a card.
Chapter 438