(24 hours later, The Observatory Post, Cult Barracks, Planet Juxta)
The soldier sat with his feet up on the railing, calmly munching on a handful of roasted peanuts, as the shells fell lazily into the trash can beside him, while his eyes wandered across the void through the lens of the Cult's extra-terrestrial telescope.
It was just another day for him in the military, dull and uneventful, as he twisted the knobs back and forth with no particular destination in mind, searching for nothing in particular and expecting even less. Usually, his job was pretty redundant for he did nothing but look into deep space, searching for enemy ship movements far away from planet Juxta, however, searching for a small cluster of ships this way was pretty luck oriented, with 999/1000 days at work proving to be uneventful.
However, today seemed to be his lucky day, as surprisingly, as he turned the knob to rotate the telescope another 0.0001°, it suddenly displayed the image of an enemy destroyer ship moving towards the Cult, causing his eyes to sparkle with excitement.
"And where do you think you are going, you cheeky bastard?" he murmured, smirking faintly as he nudged the focus wheel, expecting it to be a lone scout testing their luck.
But when he pulled the telescope back and reduced the zoom, his smirk faltered. "Bloody hell... this one's not moving alone," he whispered, the sound catching in his throat as the dark void revealed nearly a hundred ships clustered together like a school of predatory fish swimming together through space.
His previous laughter was now wiped out completely, replaced by tense focus, as he zoomed out again, his fingers trembling against the bronze casing, as the hundred ships before him multiplied into hundreds, and the hundreds into thousands, until the field of stars became marred with silhouettes of warships stretching further than his lens could trace.
"Tens of thousands...? No... this can't be right," he muttered, his chest tightening as sweat trickled down his temple, because tens of thousands of ships only meant one thing — planetary invasion.
Still not trusting his own eyes, he pulled the lens out as far as it would go, forcing the mana crystal inside to bend its limit, his breath stuck in his lungs as the picture clarified.
*Trrrr-clank*
He dropped his peanuts.
For before him were not just tens of thousands of ships. That figure wasn't even close..... "Two... hundred... thousand..." he whispered, his voice breaking into a hollow rasp, as the sheer number of enemy ships before him made him wonder if he was hallucinating?
"But the biggest ever noted attack was a 150,000 ships..." he reminded himself, as he checked the numbers, and then rechecked them, arriving at the same conclusion again and again, until he could not deny the truth any longer. What laid before him was the biggest fleet build-up the universe had ever seen, and they seemed to be unquestionably heading towards Juxta.
"The zoom on this telescope is 3billion x, and the focal length of the lens is 100 meters, so dividing the distance by standard hyperdrive speed.... The enemy ships are only 12 hours away." He calculated, as his chair fell back from how suddenly he stood up.
*CRASH*
Scrambling to his feet, he rushed out of his viewing hall with a crazed expression on his face, as he screamed— "COMMANDER! I NEED TO SEE THE COMMANDER IMMEDIATELY—" Causing the soldiers around him to wonder as to what the hell just happened?
---
Charles had just received the package of Dumpy's reforged blade, the one he had put a rush order on yesterday, when suddenly the observatory soldier stumbled into his quarters, his face pale, his eyes wide with a panic that made the rest of the guards stiffen.
"C-Commander... CO-COMMANDER!" he shouted, nearly tripping over himself as he slammed to a stop, clutching the frame of the doorway like he'd run through hell itself.
Charles lifted his gaze slowly, setting the reforged blade down on the table, his voice calm, steady, and flat. "Speak."
The soldier gulped, his throat dry, before the words burst out. "Two hundred thousand ships, sir... I counted them myself! Not scouts, not clusters... an invasion fleet. They're twelve hours out, heading straight for Juxta."
The room fell silent. Even the guards lining the walls froze, their hands hovering near their hilts as if the weight of the number alone might split their spines, while Charles remained frozen, his own expression not even changing a little bit.
"Two hundred thousand? What flag are they flying?" He asked, as the soldier bit his lips before answering, "The Universal Army Flag, Sir. I spot Five Great Carriers with them, which I assume house five enemy Monarch's, and one Royal Carrier, that looks like it belongs to Enemy Commander Raymond. The same man who has been laying siege to Juxta for the past year."
The soldier said, as Charles's head immediately began to spin into emergency action, as he calculated every possible way out of this scenario. 'Could he have realized that Soron is no longer within Cult lands, and moved to attack me because of it? If not? Then why is he marching with a 200,000 ship fleet? Surely, he isn't marching them only to stop before Juxta skies and test the Cult's response?'
Charles wondered, as after thinking about every possible scenario, he came to the grim conclusion that Raymond was coming here to fight. And that evasion from here onwards was highly unlikely.
*Crack*
*Crack*
*Sigh*
Cracking his neck, Charles showed no sign of fear or weakness, as he let out a deep sigh and calmly looked at the soldier standing before him that looked mortally pale.
"Son, do me a favor and raise the alarms. Tell the men to feed themselves quickly and report for war. Tonight might be a long one...." He instructed, as he patted the poor soldier on the back, before confidently strolling out of the room for a smoke.
(More chapters in Buyers club for TMT)