Chapter 567: Chapter 332, Titan is completely done_3
This was a catastrophic loss.
Eleven Knight Titans, more than nine hundred Sentry Mechas, five hundred thousand troops either scattered, annihilated, or captured…
The kingdom’s army had gathered, the troops executing this all-out assault, could now be described as utterly destroyed!
For the King’s Council at the rear, it was as if the sky had fallen.
Had they ever anticipated a defeat?
Of course, they had.
In war, one always considers the possibility of losing and the problems of remedying the situation afterward.
But none of their preconceived scenarios of loss were as tragic as this.
At worst, they figured they might bite off more than they could chew against the Alliance’s defense line, to no avail;
The most dire outcome would have been a disgraced retreat under a counterattack by the Alliance’s armored forces and the Interstellar Warriors.
There could have been losses of some Knight Titans, there might have been significant damage.
But now? It was far beyond significant damage, this was a total collapse.
In the recent four months of the war, they had lost a whole million troops and almost all their Knight Titans.
What’s worse, they had lost their confidence in overcoming the Alliance.
They knew that this war would be difficult to wage.
But now, their mindset had changed.
Most of them now believed that this war could not be won.
…
Crouched in a prisoner of war camp, Eureka Pambos still vividly remembered the state of the battle from just a few days ago.
He was the youngest son of the current King of Panbos, heralded as a ‘genius’ Knight, and the youngest Knight Titan pilot in the kingdom for nearly a century. In the royal succession prescribed by the King of Panbos, he was sixth in line.
But now, he could only squat here, just like all the others—including the most ordinary soldiers he wouldn’t have bothered to glance at before—gnawing on a hard-to-swallow block of synthetic starch with cold water, yet firmly forcing himself to swallow it lest he truly starve to death.
He felt the lump of the substance sticking in his throat.
He was no stranger to hardship, nor was he a pampered prince. From a young age, he knew that he would not inherit the throne under normal circumstances, so he aspired to join the military and gained his father’s approval. He endured hardship and toiled through the strictest training within the armed forces, leading to his current achievements.
But hunger was something he had indeed never experienced in his life.
He had always enjoyed ample nutrition for his training from an early age. No matter how exhausting the training, a lavish meal always followed.
However, within the Alliance’s POW camp, he experienced hunger.
It wasn’t that the Alliance was deliberately mistreating prisoners, but that they had suddenly taken in too many prisoners, and there were problems with the food supply.
And to this, the Alliance’s response was even somewhat surprising to him.
‘Political Officers’ from the Alliance would actually come to the POW camp and engage in ideological work with the prisoners, assuring them that the current difficulties were temporary and that the problems would soon be resolved. They asked everyone not to panic and even executed a few of the camp’s management officers who were unfairly distributing food and skimming off the prisoners’ rations—usually, these were officers from the Luman Kingdom’s or Kingdom of Stefano’s auxiliary forces.
These actions elevated the Alliance’s political officers significantly in the eyes of the captives.
The prisoners listened as the political officers described life on the distant Rage Owl Star, talked about the Alliance’s policies, and discussed some of the changes that had occurred in the Luman Kingdom in the past year…
Prince Eureka discovered that the once restless and panicked prisoners, despite the food shortages, were miraculously settling down.
In the past, he would never have believed such a thing possible. But now, after seeing it happen right before his eyes, he became contemplative.
After the defeat and his capture, he always wondered why the seemingly powerful kingdom’s army still ended up losing.
Up to now, although he hadn’t fully understood why, he had at least realized a part of it.
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