Legacy of the Void Fleet

How? How did he do that?” Black Wing could not help itself but say this out loud.

His sudden words caused confusion for Damien, who didn’t know what his companion was talking about. ”Who did what? How? What are you talking about, dude?” he asked.

What’s wrong with this stupid bird? Damien fumed internally. First, he roasted me, his master, as if I were nothing, and now he’s shouting like this? He calls me an idiot and dumb when his AI core is surely corrupted!

Holding a grudge, Damien scolded Black Wing in his mind, wisely refraining from saying it aloud for fear of suffering another brutal counterattack; after all, there was no winning against a super-intelligent AI.

”Oh!” Only then did Black Wing come out of his daze. With a pained expression on his bird-like face, he spoke: ”Look for yourself, and you will know what I’m talking about.”

With that, Black Wing flipped his wings, and a holographic screen appeared just in front of Damien, who looked at it with full curiosity. (Yes, only two seconds. All the talk between Black Wing and Damien might sound like it took longer, but in reality, it occupied just a couple of seconds—a minor and irrelevant amount of time in the current battle.)

The display mainly focused on the Minotaur main battle line, which was marked by a red cluster of lights. Off to one side was another signature, different from the Minotaur red—it was green. Damien immediately knew what the green signature represented: his own group of mecha, followed by a group of stealth-class ships carrying thousands of elite Marine soldiers.

Though the number sounded large, it actually wasn’t: these few thousand soldiers had to take down and gain control of three Minotaur Dreadnoughts. If his group was fast enough, their targets would increase by one: the Minotaur second flagship, the Taurus Prime.

”That would be a disadvantage in itself. After all, the targets were increasing, but their own troops remained the same and unchanged. This meant that with an already small number of elite Space Marines, they would need to stretch even more thinly in order to capture Taurus Prime.

But despite the disadvantages, that wasn’t a concern for Damien himself, nor was it for the Space Marines. Even being stretched thin, their mission was mainly to take control of the crucial systems of these Dreadnoughts and prevent them from being put through self-harm by the Minotaurs once they all realise what was happening. Before long, the minotaurs would then start to do whatever they could to destroy the ship and try to take the Marines along with themselves in the ship’s destruction.

After all this, it would be their first real chance to strike at our fleet — and they won’t waste it. If they succeed, they’ll also stop us from boarding and capturing their ship. So Minotaur is ready to throw everything into the attack to make sure it does.

This is exactly what he wanted the Marnie’s to prevent.

Afterward, the army of combat bots would join them in cleaning up all the Minotaurs within these ships, and then the facility would be under their control.

All in all, that was the plan. Therefore, Damien had no concern; even if he received an additional target, he wouldn’t feel troubled at all.

In fact, he would rather like it, as that would mean more merits and a definite win over his rival, Raj.

After all, he would then have accomplished more than Raj could have in this battle, which meant he was in the lead and guaranteed his win.

And only because of that was he had gone ’all out from the start.’ Well, not all out, but somewhat he had.

This thought passed Damien as he looked at the familiar signature of his own forces. But then another signature appeared in his line of sight on the display, coloured in blue, which was the signature of Raj’s forces.

That wasn’t entirely shocking; after all, the targets had been divided into two groups, so the appearance of Raj’s signature wasn’t what concerned him. What truly concerned, surprised, and shocked him was where these signatures appeared in the Minotaur main battle line.

The signatures were almost close to the 7 Dreadnoughts. His own forces were far behind, at least 3 to 4 seconds behind, but that much was more than enough time to gain an advantage in the battle.

”D-Damn, how did he do that? How the hell did they reach so close to those ships in that time frame when they should have been far, far behind us!” he screamed, running his hand through his hair and pulling it as if going mad, the world around him turning upside down.

It was just that unbelievable to him. He even rubbed his eyes, then re-checked the data once again.

But the data remained the same, with no difference at all, baffling him once again. ”Damn it, I can’t believe he was able to do this! Not fair! How am I supposed to compete if he cheats like that?” he spoke, muttering something incoherent.

”’Not fair?’ Can you please stop blaming others? It’s because you are the one who is dumb and then gets played by your own rival, who reads the dumb you like a book.

Forget it all. You are only good at martial combat, and that’s only because of this almighty me who lets you use this mecha. It is saddening for myself to fall into your hands, but there’s no going back now that we’ve already formed the bond. My luck is just that much worse to have someone like you who fits my criteria, albeit on the dumb side,” said Black Wing, the regret plain on his dark, bird-like face.

Damien was already boiling with anger, and now knowing that he was somehow taken advantage of by his rival, his earlier plan for a victory celebration was completely falling apart.

Now, as if rubbing salt in wounds that were fresh and open, his so-called partner was going even further, doing sowithout any filter. ”Dammit, it hurts!”