Chapter 588: Chapter 342, 4 years
Four years had flown by, and this marked the fifth year that Lucy Lee Ko Xi fought in Korolya.
Gazing at the ruined Fino City in the distance, he couldn’t help but remember the meeting they had with Mr. Gu during his passage through Korolya, after the engagement ceremony on his way back to Rage Owl Star four years ago, as well as the conversation they had.
At that time, he had been fighting on Korolya for less than a year. He remembered expressing his views on the war to Mr. Gu.
He was a soldier, and before that, he couldn’t even be considered one. Initially just a small merchant active in Rubbish Town, dealing in some daily necessities and ores, it wasn’t until his wife and child died at the hands of the Green Skin aliens that he took up arms, swearing to kill all the Green Skins.
Forming the Beast Slaughter Group was something that came later; back then, he was simply driven by hatred and determination.
At that stage, he never imagined that by joining the alliance and improving his skills to better slay Green Skins, he would truly eradicate them all in a short time. The heavens-sent fire that seemed capable of destroying everything was something he still vividly remembered to this day.
It was from then on that he turned his heart to steel, adopting the mindset of a soldier and serving the alliance.
He had gone through the entire campaign for the unification of Rage Owl Star and was immediately sent to Korolya to combat the demonic threats. From initially being an acting commander, he now almost commanded the entire Rage Bear Legion’s army of a million, and he had been formally promoted to the rank of Imperial Brigadier General a few years prior.
But no matter how his identity had changed over the years, he always saw himself as a soldier and could only view things from a military perspective.
The so-called military needs to resolve Korolya’s problems that he proposed to Mr. Gu had come from this perspective.
He also remembered that after hearing his suggestions, Mr. Gu let out a wry smile, sighed, and then said to him,
“It seems you will be staying in Korolya for many years.”
A prophetic statement.
Thinking like a soldier, Li Kexi found many things incomprehensible. For instance, he couldn’t grasp why Mr. Gu knew at once that the solution he proposed was impossible to implement?
Wasn’t it a very simple task?
Fifty million Star Realm Armed Forces, or a billion native troops – these numbers might seem astronomical at first glance, but when put in the context of the Human Empire spanning across the galaxy, and Korolya with its population of forty billion, they appeared rather trivial.
Within the Dragonhawk Star Domain alone, there are nine Army Groups named after the Star Domain itself, just like the Dragonhawk Legion. In addition, there are numerous other Star Realm Armed Forces units, similar to the Rage Bear Legion, with only the 3rd Army Group currently stationed in the Tianma Star Sector.
In Li Kexi’s view, it was always possible to squeeze out another Army Group from somewhere else.
As for that one billion troops, it sounded alarmingly high but for Korolya’s population of forty billion, it simply meant achieving a mobilization rate of 2.5%.
He didn’t ask Mr. Gu this question at the time, but over the years, he gradually figured out some reasons himself. For example, although the Empire had many troops, it had even more enemies, leaving no troops available to spare; mobilizing millions, or tens of millions of people at a high rate was relatively easy, but it was much harder with a population of forty billion. It wasn’t just a difference in scale; it also reflected a demand on the governmental mobilization ability, not to mention that Korolya’s finances couldn’t support an army of ten billion at war.
However, after understanding all these reasons, Li Kexi had more questions rather than fewer.
The real difficulties certainly existed objectively, but… it was a matter of life and death! Was it the time to talk about this difficulty or that difficulty when death was on the doorstep?
Would they only stop talking about difficulties once the population of forty billion fell, and a lament composed of countless bodies, lives, and souls echoed in subspace, turning the entire Korolya into a super den of evil, radiating outwards to swallow the entire Star Sector and even the neighboring Star Sectors, evolving into a threat on the scale of the Iron-teeth Greenskins?
He admitted he was full of grievances.
He wasn’t a Korolya person, but after fighting here for so long and witnessing countless Korolyans suffer, anyone would be moved. Even if only from a soldier’s standpoint, he needed to know what the soldiers under his command and he himself were fighting for.
But no matter how great his grievances, they couldn’t change the situation.
The forces he had hoped would come to resolve the problem had not arrived in the past four years.
And he could only watch his troops send countless bullets and shells to face those monsters; watch his brave soldiers fight and fall, only to be replaced by another batch…
Although the Rage Bear Legion had expanded, most of its forces now actually came from Korolya itself. Every two years, the Military Affairs Department would allocate a portion of the Imperial Tax received from Korolya, including a population part, to the Rage Bear Legion. One reason was to replenish the losses incurred by the Rage Bear Legion in previous battles, and the other was to further expand their forces.
The Rage Bear Legion, which had expanded to five hundred thousand troops four years ago, now boasted a million-strong force, seemingly growing ever larger as they fought.