Chapter 67: An Eye For An Eye Taken To Its Logical Extreme

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A/N: Apologies, this update took awhile, as I have been quite busy with some stuff in life recently. However, today's update is slightly longer than usual to make up for it.

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The sun was rising on this side of the continent once more. After a long and gruesome week, here I stood in the core provinces of the great Empire. There was a rather complicated feeling when I finally saw the castles and cities in person after I had seen its strategic representation on the invasion planning map. The scale of these invasions really didn't register when one was merely staring at a simple map.

Then again, I suppose it was far too late to say that.

A loud mechanical groan thundered through the plains, followed by a disorienting yet unnatural tremor of the earth. A great lifeless beast strode across the grasslands of the primitive nation, leading its metallic brethren in a hypnotic trance of synchronized striding.

With each step, the quadrupedal walker crushed and overturned soil decades in the making. Yet, the destruction of farmland was but a prelude to a form given purpose in war. The robotic war form towered above the creatures bound to the planet, granting them the opportunity to behold a visage of hopelessness.

Its colossal form cast a vast shadow on the world beneath its thin, insect like limbs. Unintentional in its design, yet the unnatural darkness it created allowed its victims to realize the true might of a technology centuries upon centuries ahead...as the sudden flash of light seared into their pupils with but a single salvo of the walker's siege artillery.

If using Leopard 2s against medieval armies was unfair, then this was a war crime taken to its logical extreme. A support siege walker utilized by Horizon's vast armada, its original purpose was to bombard planet side garrisons from afar, no matter the terrain. It really was absurd.

I mean, in my rather weak defense, there really wasn't much Horizon could do here in the way of limiting casualties. If we weren't fighting a battle of utter annihilation, then that basically ruled out a good ninety percent of Horizon's fighting capability. There really was no such thing as a precision orbital bombardment when it came to spacecraft that were powered by reactors built upon the principle of Maxwell's demon.

We were invading the Empire, yes, but I wasn't trying to commit mass genocide here, as much as my subordinates had hoped that to be the case.

"So you came all the way home, General Zhukov," I distracted myself from the slow march of the titanic war forms. "Does it not pain you? Watching your glorious Empire fall apart within a single week."

"What can I say, Your Majesty? Rather than despair, the emotion is more of numbing shock. I have seen more mystical things in a single night than I have for my entire life...and I have seen truly outlandish things during my younger days."

"Oh? For example?"

"I wouldn't bore Your Majesty with my adventures," the general chuckled bitterly. "Who is a friendship with a dragon meant to impress? Surely not the individual whose armies have mythical creatures and entities as regular soldiers."

"There are dragons in this word? I had never seen one outside of Eden."

Native dragons, of course. At the very most, I've seen wyverns and what not. For a dragon that was capable of intelligent exchange to exist, it would imply being a higher race native to this world wasn't entirely impossible....at most exceedingly rare or difficult when it came to fulfilling the various conditions for higher life form to "spawn" in.

"Not anymore. At least, I don't think she had a child."

A difficult expression surfaced on the general's features, as he failed to elaborate on his train of thought. What in the world was with people in this place and them starting a conversation and not finishing it? Seriously! I suppose I was going by a need to know basis here so I shouldn't be too bothered, but there was just something distasteful about mentioning something intriguing then proceeding to throw that line of thought out the window!

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