Every soldier in the Mindborn Empire kept a close watch on the shifting tides of the war.
Since the outbreak of conflict, reliable updates from the front lines were rare, and the alien invaders known as the Sharkborn pushed forward relentlessly as if they never slept.
Rumors whispered that the Sharkborn fleet had dropped fresh deployment groups onto several new cities just a few cycles ago, making the war even more brutal.
It was absolute madness.
The planetary campaign launched by Silas Trifang was now public knowledge across all of Kugrage.
After surviving the initial shock, the Mindborn population burned with fury, voluntarily pooling their assets to resist the invaders.
The tenets of the High Order ran deep, forcing the people to act as one cohesive unit in times of absolute crisis.
They shared zero traits with weaker civilizations whose factions secretly plotted surrender before even seeing the enemy, thoroughly betraying their allies.
Sprawl structures towered over the streets of Pan-On City, where crowds of Mindborn moved with hurried paces.
Everyone wore a heavy, grim expression, only pausing their strides to exchange hushed whispers when crossing paths with a known companion.
To an outside observer, it looked like casual dialogue, but the reality on the ground was far different.
"Have you scanned the latest telemetry? Another city fell to the invaders today."
"What?"
"Curse it. How is their velocity this high? Did the empire not deploy heavy legions to reinforce those outer perimeters?"
"Save your breath. Those reinforcements only bought a temporary window to bleed, they hold zero capability to halt the Sharkborn vanguard."
"If that is the calculation, the enemy lines will breach Pan-On City shortly."
"It does not matter. I will register my name with the reserve corps today, those alien monsters will never conquer our stronghold."
"Move fast, I will register alongside you."
Tas City was an entirely unremarkable settlement within the Mindborn Empire.
Standing among the dozens of citadels scattered across the globe, it held zero unique features or special resources, leaving most citizens outside the local population with almost zero memory of its coordinates.
Yet at this exact junction, its strategic priority had skyrocketed, transforming the settlement into a vital bridgehead guarding the primary transit corridor into the imperial core.
Along with two secondary strongholds positioned behind its perimeter, it comprised the absolute vanguard line built to break the Sharkborn push toward the north.
While the empire laid claim to the entirety of Planet Kugrage, their infrastructure was heavily skewed, with the vast majority of citadels clustered across the resource-rich northern hemisphere.
The remaining settlements were scattered across the wilderness, and they served as the very first targets wiped from the grid by the invaders.
Having extracted a baseline understanding of the Sharkborn capabilities, the high imperial council no longer calculated an absolute victory.
Instead, they aimed to drag the conflict into a high-intensity war of attrition.
This represented their optimal matrix, for as long as their academic defensive lines didn't fracture, hope remained active.
Massive payloads of military hardware, munitions, and raw supplies were currently pouring into Tas City from the deep rear sectors.
Realizing that individual combat specifications stood zero chance against the alien drones, the high command heavily reinforced the garrison, swelling the active defense numbers to a staggering two hundred thousand troops.
Had the structural capacity of the city allowed for a larger footprint, that metric would have easily doubled.
Two hundred thousand soldiers might sound trivial compared to stellar-scale empires.
But the entire Mindborn species barely cleared ten million citizens, with their active military standing at only one million units.
Under that data, deploying two hundred thousand troops to a solitary fortress meant investing one-fifth of the empire's total military strength.
Depositing a fifth of their global military force into a single location was an absolute gamble.
If Tas City's perimeter fractured and this army was systematically deleted, the empire would slide into a terminal decay even if their backup lines held.
In other words, this force could sustain casualties, but absolute termination was out of the question, and Tas City could never be allowed to fall.
Consequently, Tas City had been re-engineered into a massive, multi-layered defensive bunker.
The surrounding terrain bristled with countless concrete pillboxes and trenches, while the high city walls were heavily crowd-lined with automated machine-gun turrets.
Any unidentified tracking signature attempting to breach the perimeter would be instantly riddled with ballistic fire.
Furthermore, the exterior terrain was defended by five intersecting ring lines, each protected by deep trenches, high-voltage grids, and dense minefields anchoring the outermost boundary.
In the estimations of General Silae, the supreme commander directing the garrison, Tas City stood as an impenetrable fortress that was completely impossible to conquer.
Even an advanced alien army would break against its teeth.
High above, aboard the flagship of the Sharkborn armada.
Garth Gnash hammered against the security door of the briefing room once more, though his vocalizers delivered excellent news this time.
"Commander, the legion chiefs have transmitted their updates. They have smoothly finalized the third phase of the campaign objectives and are currently consolidating their lines to launch the terminal phase of the operation."
"Haha, excellent! Outstanding!"
Silas Trifang let out a booming laugh, his optics immediately scanning the grand holographic projection filling the tactical sandtable.
His anxieties regarding the two-month deadline vanished entirely from his processors.
At this stage of the conquest, the native Mindborn Empire retained ownership over only two dozen citadels within their core sector, while every outlying settlement had been systematically uprooted by his legions.
The final clash was looming.
"Tell me, Gnash, have our tracking arrays registered any movements from the Mindborn?"
"Affirmative, Commander," Gnash nodded, scrolling through the logs. "They have pooled an active force of two hundred thousand soldiers inside a stronghold designated as Tas City, calculating that they can halt our vanguard at that coordinate."
"Tas City?"
Silas Trifang tapped the console to pin the coordinates of the fortress on the map.
He evaluated the data for a micro-cycle before his jaw plates peeled back into a massive, predatory grin. "A pathetic struggle."
"Route the directive. Once consolidation protocols complete, every active legion will march onto Tas City."
He paused for a fraction of a second before adding a calculating postscript. "Notify the chiefs that if the city's defenses prove too dense to breach smoothly, I will navigate the flagship down to deliver direct fire support."
"Understood, Commander," Gnash replied, his subroutines instantly interpreting the meaning behind the phrase.
He knew exactly what kind of fire support the supreme commander was referencing: their absolute trump card, the orbital bombardment cannon.
Deploying an orbital rail gun against a population of planetary primitives who didn't even possess sub-orbital starships was more than enough to instantly vaporize any defensive layout.
While Silas Trifang appeared aggressive and reckless on the surface, his logic subroutines operated perfectly well, matching his status as a high warlord.
No capable commander revealed his ultimate weapon at the absolute dawn of an engagement.
Only his personal flagship carried a single orbital cannon within its superstructure.
Even when early sieges against specific outer cities lagged behind the calculated timeline, the commander had refused to engage the flagship's main cannon against those local targets.
He had preserved the asset until this final stage, recognizing it as the most resource-intensive and heavily defended phase of the conquest.
"Deliver my commands. Order the legions to converge their vectors on this Tas City, the assault commences in three solar cycles."
"Right away, Commander."
Meanwhile, light-years away within an unmapped star system, a massive purple-grey wedge silhouette materialized smoothly from prow to stern, looking as if it were being sketched onto the fabric of space.
The starship navigated the local vectors for only a few brief minutes before cleanly vanishing from view, appearing as though an invisible eraser had wiped it from existence.
Yet across the coordinate where the vessel dropped off the grid, a faint, multi-colored distortion rippled through the vacuum, resembling the iridescent film of an expanding soap bubble.
Back inside Pan-On City.
A massive, powerful beast of burden surged down the widest central avenue of the citadel, its heavy hoof plates striking the metallic stone with rhythmic thuds.
Vala leaned flat against the creature's armored spine, his vocalizers shouting with absolute excitement.
"Faster, push your stride!"
These beasts were massive, thick-limbed quadrupeds native to Planet Kugrage, stretching well over five meters in length and standing three meters tall at the shoulder.
Their leathery grey skin was heavily textured, with a dense ring of dark crimson fur encircling their thick necks, earning them the classification of Red-maned beasts.
Because of their naturally compliant temperament, the ancient Mindborn had domesticated the species to serve as heavy mounts and reliable cargo transports.
Rumors indicated that the imperial military still maintained an elite, heavily kitted cavalry wing mounted exclusively on these creatures, numbering over a thousand units.
Historical records suggested the species owed its common name to the primitive pioneer who first discovered its incredible capacity for carrying heavy freight.
While the quadrupeds boasted a substantial physical mass, claiming they stood among the largest fauna on Kugrage would be a completely flawed calculation.
As the common law of evolution dictated, while primitive fluid sources were teeming with lethal pathogens, wild species consumed the liquid without issue for a simple reason: the bloodlines unable to process it had been wiped out eons ago.
Kugrage operated under the exact same logic; the intense gravitational metrics of the world had completely exterminated miniature wildlife, leaving the ecosystem populated exclusively by colossal organisms packing incredibly dense skeletal structures.
Vala continued his rapid sprint through the streets, finally bringing his mount to a halt before the primary palace gates.
The administrative hierarchy of the Mindborn Empire granted the lord of a citadel absolute control over its military and political networks, anchoring unmatched, supreme authority within their post.
The sovereign lord of Pan-On City happened to be Vala's father, the patriarch of the Va Clan: Lord Vaan.
During the ancient tribal era, the active census of the Va Clan had cleared three thousand units at its peak performance.
Yet as the millennia filtered the lineages, the core bloodline had narrowed down to only a dozen living individuals.
Naturally, this scarcity only amplified their elite status, matching the baseline rule that rarity dictates value.
To put their true leverage within Pan-On City into perspective, it was a documented fact that Vala had only discovered that consuming goods required currency, or that taking a citizen's life violated the legal codes, after he reached his full growth cycle and ventured outside the city limits.
"Halt!"
Clearing the inner courtyard, Vala vaulted off the mount and addressed the palace sentries. "Has my father returned to his terminal?"
"The Sovereign Lord just completed his transit," the guard replied instantly, perfectly familiar with the patriarch's son.
"Excellent. See to it that this mount is properly sustained, it is my favorite asset."
Vala issued the command carelessly and strode toward the primary residence hall.
Moving across his family's personal domain, he never deployed a security detail, completely indifferent to the fact that he was breaching the lord's private quarters without an administrative log.
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