Chapter 1388 — The Decisive Battle Draws Near

The sentence crashed into the council chamber and tightened every face in an instant—every face but Gao Yang's. After the first shock, his expression had settled into utter calm, and he spoke softly, as if in thought: "So it has come to this..."

The assault on the Deep Blue Well was a sudden event, yet in truth Gao Yang was not surprised. From the beginning he had known that the wasteland legions, unable to achieve their present aims, might turn and strike at the Deep Blue Well. After all, the dark priests' final goal was to deliver the rune stones and "domesticate" this planet; if they could not break the civilized world's lines, they could only turn to the greatest Deep Blue rift at the wasteland's heart. In other words, so long as the Alliance kept piling up advantages on other fronts, and the counterattack into the wasteland and the building of the barrier wall went on, the wasteland legions would sooner or later assault the Deep Blue Well in their despair.

"Remember the staff officers' projections—those dark priests were bound to attack the Deep Blue Well sooner or later," Gao Yang's voice rose in the chamber, steady and calm, and the slight tension of all present subsided by half at once. "Their offensive against the civilized world has been thwarted on every front; all the wasteland legions have been pushed back deep into the wasteland, and the Alliance's purification devices are spreading swiftly into the wasteland's heartland—the dark priests have no choice left. To my mind, their choosing this moment to strike the Deep Blue Well may in fact be a good sign."

"A good sign?" Amber's eyes went wide. "Verodai is getting pounded!"

"I am not, the battle is still—" Verodai opened her mouth on instinct, but swallowed the rest halfway—she truly could not bring herself to argue such nonsense with the Alliance's disgrace on an occasion like this. "You are right."

Amber: a creature of the night, of biting tongue by habit, natural enemy of the ancient machine-spirits. Any creature with a shred of shame cannot bring its full strength to bear before her; the more shame it has, the more obvious the effect.

Gao Yang was long used to this. He shot a glance at the wide-eyed Amber and said offhandedly: "Verodai's base has formidable defenses, and a complete Iron Man Legion sits in garrison there. The difficulty of attacking it is easy to imagine. In our earlier projections we also concluded that unless driven to the very last extremity, those dark priests would never willingly gnaw at that hard bone—they would not seek trouble with the Iron Man Legion even if they could still trade losses with the Alliance legions. But now they have chosen to attack the Deep Blue Well, which means they have reached the end of their rope—they have been driven into a corner faster than we imagined. That is a good thing."

As he spoke he rose slowly, both hands braced on the edge of the council table, his voice low and forceful.

"Attacking the Deep Blue Well is the last and worst choice those wasteland legions could make. After this, the dark priests have played out every card they hold. The Alliance's barrier walls on four fronts have already pushed into the heartland of the old Gondorian Empire; the wasteland legions have little depth left to trade with us. And to attack the Deep Blue Well they must pour in great effort and great numbers of troops, which dooms them to be weaker than before on the fronts against the Alliance—and the Alliance armies' advance will go more smoothly than before.

"Send word to the leaders on every front of the Alliance at once. The hour of the final decisive battle draws near. Tell our allies to bring out everything they have kept in the bottom of the chest—lay the barrier wall across with all their strength, and pin those monsters dead in the scorched earth of the old Gondorian Empire with overwhelming force. The survival of the civilized world will be decided within the next month.

"We must close the barrier wall before the Deep Blue Well falls, and shatter the wasteland legions utterly!"

Gao Yang's final steady, forceful words seemed to carry boundless inspiration, filling all present with confidence and fighting spirit once more, dispelling the gloom that had weighed on them. And indeed none of the figures who could appear here was a mediocrity; once the situation was clear, each knew what to do—the few matters decided in the earlier discussion were swiftly fine-tuned, some less important affairs could be slightly delayed, and in the time to come the Cecil Empire and the whole Alliance would pour all their strength into this war.

One figure after another rose and left the council chamber; one holographic projection after another faded from the air. When the secretaries of the Supreme Hall of Governance had also gone, only Gao Yang and Amber remained in the vast room, and Verodai, wreathed in faint holy light.

The three of them were the last to go.

Attendants and guards waited beyond the door.

Gao Yang rose from his chair and let out a soft breath. Amber stepped close from the side and looked up at him: "It is not all that rosy, is it."

"It is not bad. The dawn of victory truly is before everyone's eyes—only the dark before that dawn is truly deadly," Gao Yang said, and since this fellow had keen senses and a very sharp mind hidden beneath his unreliable exterior, he concealed nothing now. "Even if we have a ninety-nine percent chance of victory, that one percent of failure means consequences on the scale of planetary extinction. Everyone can think of that too, in fact... but we can only set aside the possibility of 'what if we don't win' for now."

"...All right, I think so too," Amber breathed out, his figure already beginning to fade in the air, and he waved a hand. "I'm off to be busy. The idle days are over..."

Gao Yang watched Amber's figure slowly vanish into the air and could not help shaking his head: "...You have been idle for a very long time."

Then he was silent for two seconds, raised his head and looked at Verodai: "You really can hold out for a month, yes?"

"That is the result of precise calculation. Within the foreseeable margin of error, there will be no further variables," Verodai said calmly. "I will hold until you arrive."

"...This feeling is truly strange," Gao Yang could not help but muse. "You are standing right before my eyes..."

"Yes, I stand before you, yet I am also trapped at the deepest heart of the wasteland, and that often gives me a sense of cognitive dislocation," Verodai said, her voice gentle and serene. "Now and then, when I wake in this body, I am affected by the body itself—gladdened by the sunlight and light wind beyond the window, so that I forget the pollution and corruption of the wasteland."

"...The pollution and corruption will soon be over." After a moment of silence, Gao Yang said slowly.

"Yes, the corruption and the rot will come to an end."

(End of this chapter)