Chapter 589: Chapter 342, Four Years_2
Under this number, only 20% of the troops in the Rage Bear Legion were from the Alliance, maintaining roughly the same total number as before the military expansion, while the rest of the newly increased forces were primarily from Korolya itself.
At the same time, as per Gu Hang’s request, the newly formed units in the Rage Bear Legion had at least 10% of their personnel from the Alliance.
As for weapons, equipment, and logistical supplies, the Alliance accepted orders directly from the Imperial Military Department for direct provision.
Even after several rounds of expansion, the personnel composition of the Rage Bear Legion was predominantly Korolya people, but they still proved to be the best-performing division-level force on Korolya. Under the command of General Hans, the Rage Bear Legion always undertook very important tasks.
Li Kexi asked himself honestly if they had fought hard enough. At the same time, he had considerable respect for the warriors of the Dragonhawk Legion – 3rd Army Group, who fought alongside them; the Star Realm Army and some Planetary Defense Forces were indeed not the same concept.
But still, they kept retreating.
Four years ago, they could still maintain control over the top layer of Nest Capital in Fino City and occasionally launch military operations on the ground to snatch some resources, evacuate some civilians who were not infected, or strike at enemy clusters that were reported in the intelligence.
Two years ago, they had almost completely withdrawn from the ground sections of Nest Capital, and even the top layers began to experience severe erosion.
A year ago, the Star Realm Army already felt overwhelmed. Fino City had now become a dead zone, with virtually no military forces or living people serving the military anymore. Normal civilians, if not already evacuated in the past few years, were the ones who couldn’t be saved anyway.
Moreover, a year ago, there were more and more reports of plague infections and Plague Cult incidents in other nesting areas. Even in the planetary capital, Mingyan City, the Bottom Nest District was showing signs of getting out of control.
The severely undermanned Korolya Defense Forces, which had barely expanded to two hundred million, simply could not manage so many super-large-scale Nest Capitals. In some severe areas, the Star Realm Army had to divide their forces to deal with them.
This severely weakened the control of the Star Realm Army over the situation in Fino City.
Therefore, a year ago, General Hans made a decision to completely withdraw all forces from Fino City and no longer waste resources there.
All troops left the Nest Capital within a month, taking with them all the healthy people they could.
Following that, a cruiser of the Imperial Navy, along with several destroyers, began to coordinate strikes against Fino City.
This strike was carried out in a manner of extermination. There could no longer be any more hesitations; they planned to completely destroy the entire Fino City, to eradicate this biggest den of evil and source of infection.
This way, whether it be the Star Realm Army freed up or the local Defense Forces, they could deploy the freed up forces into other Nest Capitals to resolve problems that were still resolvable.
Anyway, Fino City was beyond saving.
However, what happened later proved that this decision was made too late.
Heavenly fire descended, and that orbital strike was even grander than what Li Kexi had seen on Rage Owl Star when bombarding the Green Skin Orcs. After all, in addition to a cruiser, several destroyers also participated in the bombardment. They weren’t just conducting a single round of strikes but planned to carry out multiple, super-saturated orbital bombings.
If destruction was the goal, then it had to be ensured that it was carried out completely and thoroughly.
However, after the bombardment began, the first few rounds were quite effective; the upper district of Fino City was basically destroyed. Then, above the half-ruined Fino City, a layer of purple-green luminescent membrane emerged, blocking the strikes from orbit.
Although it wasn’t quite the same as conventional shields, in the end, they confirmed that what appeared over the skies of Fino City was a Void Shield.
A special kind of Void Shield powered by Subspace Dark Magic.
This was far too astonishing; even at this point, people realized that during these few uncontrolled years, beneath the festering wounds that even the Star Realm Army couldn’t deal with, those Plague Cultists had already developed to such an extent!
While General Hans urgently called a meeting, preparing to discuss how to deal with the Void Shield enshrouding Fino City, allowing the orbital strike to continue, the situation took a further turn.
From the holes in the destroyed upper district of Fino City, dozens of dark green missiles streaked through Korolya’s dusky atmosphere and shot straight into the sky.
Immediately sensing something ominous, General Hans urgently contacted the Imperial Navy in orbit.
Indeed, they had been struck.
The Plague Cult in Fino City now not only possessed Void Shields, protecting their already owned city from orbital bombardment, but even further developed countermeasures. This type of anti-orbital firepower was, without a doubt, a direct threat to the Imperial Navy’s fleet.
The Imperial Navy had not anticipated this at the beginning; the “Concerto” cruiser didn’t even activate its Void Shield and took a solid hit.
It was understandable that they didn’t raise their shields. They weren’t engaging in a naval battle against another fleet, and in their original expectations, they never thought they would be hit. Whether it was a Void Shield or an energy shield, activating them requires a significant amount of energy, and that’s expensive.
But it was this oversight that caused considerable losses.
The cruiser was strong enough to sustain a hit, suffering only damage, which wasn’t a big problem—it could just go back for repairs. However, a destroyer that also hadn’t activated its energy shield was very unlucky and took six hits, one of which penetrated the power cabin, causing an internal explosion.
Therefore, the Korolya people, in the right location, could look up at the sky and see a huge firework explode above.
The loss of a destroyer was by no means a small matter. Any one of Tianma Fleet’s combat destroyers cost no less than 1.3 billion.
Using the exchange rate of ten Tax Currency for one soldier, this was the life of 130 million soldiers.
Moreover, on that fully staffed destroyer, there were more than 40,000 naval soldiers.
All of them were gone in the explosion.
The chaotic Navy fleet immediately activated their Void Shields and energy shields, and then bombarded the planet’s surface even more fiercely.
This exchange of fire between the orbit and the surface lasted for three days.
Li Kexi and his comrades surrounding Fino City watched a very splendid ‘fireworks show’ for three days.
And this ground-orbit bombardment war eventually ended with the Imperial Navy giving up.
In the last communication deciding the matter, the commander of the Imperial Navy, with a quite embarrassing attitude, made it clear to Hans that they would not continue the fight.
On one hand, they were running out of ammunition.
On the other hand, and more importantly, they saw no hope of victory.
Although throughout these three days, the Imperial Navy always held the initiative—they could bombard whenever they wanted and if not, just fly to the other side of the planet’s orbit to avoid the enemy’s fire, waiting for their energy shields to recover before coming back. Precisely because of this initiative, the Imperial Navy didn’t suffer any further losses.
But obviously, they had no real way of dealing with Fino City.
With their ships continuously driven away from orbit by the Plague Cult’s anti-orbital fire, the orbital firepower never reached its initial saturation level over the three days and thus could not completely break Fino City’s Void Shield.
General Hans was quite dissatisfied, questioning the Navy why they didn’t dare to persist despite the casualties, to completely destroy the Void Shield?
The Navy seniors refused to be outdone, arguing that losing one ship was already a major loss, and they certainly did not want to risk losing another.
In their words, it was: “The value of any single ship is worth more than all the lives on the ground combined. Rather than have us risk our necks, you should launch a ground assault. As long as you destroy their anti-orbital firepower, I will continue the bombardment of the planet’s surface.”
This statement infuriated General Hans, but what the other side said, although it might not be the truth, was probably not far off.
Neither side could convince the other to bear the sacrifice, so a fierce war of words ensued, with both sides hurling verbal assault at each other, but the obvious result was that neither would be persuaded to endure the sacrifice.
This matter was thus dragged on, right up to now, for a whole year.