<h4>Chapter 708 - A Silent Cold War...</h4>


    ''So far, nothing is conclusive.'' Felix thought to himself, ''Both armies are hiding at least 20% of their fleets. Those are the dangerous ones.''


    He could still remember the final battle where Zosia died. Both armies had used fleets that no one knew about.


    More shockingly, those fleets were made out of one the most advanced technological warships.


    They were equipped with white sma weapons that could turn most spaceships into a junk in one hit.


    Sure, having more warships than the other side meant having more control over the battlefield.


    After all, they could cover more ground by taking advantage of their numbers.


    That''s why Zosia was nning to send out nova fleets into many yellow zones at once while the royal family didn''t have that luxury.


    They could not send everyone out and leave their major nodes unprotected. Such as, the many wormholes in their territory that were connected with many backgrounds.


    In a few minutes, Felix had finished the book and picked another one that was about the basics of space tactics.


    He had four more books that spoke about intermediate tactics, advanced tactics, and improvised tactics.


    As he continued to read, he started to realize that even though those tactics were just basic and simple, there was a lot of depth into them.


    They had been optimized over the years to the point even the worst general could use one and end up leading his fleets to victory if the tactic seed.


    Though, because they were used too many times and known by all, those tactics get countered pretty easily.


    For example, one of the tactics was called ''The Wormhole Bait.''


    The core concept of it was to send an empty 1 star fleet inside a wormhole that was defended from the other side by the enemy.


    The warships would be filled with deadly cosmic explosions that were able to cause damage to anyone within thousands of kilometers.


    If the other side was too close to the wormhole, they would be sent straight to hell with a single button.


    To counter this tactic, the armies now days simply leave an explosives'' detector near the wormhole.


    So, no one continued to use this strategy anymore since it could be countered quite easily.


    As Felix kept reading books about tactics, they got more shrewd and hard to counter.


    When he reached the advanced tactics, he couldn''t help but admire their inventors'' intelligence foring up with them.


    The most admirable part was that most of those strategies got invented during critical moments.


    Soon, he finished all of them and stashed them within his memory. With his perfect memory, he could spot any tactic and its counter in a heartbeat.


    He might not be as good as generals when it came to experience, but as long as he continued reading, his knowledge would be even better than theirs.


    ****


    After a few months, most of the battleground''s streams had been turned into ghostnds. No one was watching them neither did they bother to speak about the war.


    Other viral interesting things had grabbed their attention as they waited far too long for some action to happen.


    Unfortunately, there was no way the anti-royality alliance and the royal family would rash their ns for the sake of entertaining those viewers.


    This wasn''t a game but an actual real war. That''s why even the SGAlliance didn''t interfere to force both sides to make it interesting with at least some skirmishes.


    That''s right, not a single skirmish had urred in the past few months!


    Both sides ced their entire focus on securing the nearby yellow nodes and the wormholes within them.


    Since we are talking about space here, it was normal that the spaceships would be spending most of their time journeying at the speed of light.


    When they finally reach their destination, they begin building defensive stations around the wormhole and the capital city of that background.


    So, how could there be skirmishes, when doing those two things literally take forever.


    The viewers didn''t give a shit that both sides wanted toy down a good foundation before going ham on each other.


    They simply wanted to see blood get shed and spaceships go boom boom.


    Still, the faithful viewers remained active consistently, watching both sides doing their things.


    Actually, most of them were working for those two to supervise the advancement of the other.


    Watching the stream wasn''t blocked for each side, making it a fair deal.


    Since both of them could take advantage of it, no one would whine about having their progress getting streamed to the enemy.


    Plus, it wasn''t like they couldin about it to the SGAlliance. They were fighting in the UVR only thanks to Queen Ai.


    <i>Knock Knock...</i>


    "Commander Zosia, I am here for my daily report."


    Zosia lifted her head from a bunch of holographic documentations and answered with a weary voice, "Get in."


    Signs of mental exhaustion had already started to appear on her even though she was in the UVR. There was simply so much to cover, she was finding it difficult to keep on.


    If it wasn''t for Maganda Chief, Gabriel, Berry, and Roka sharing some of her load, she would have already tapped out.


    "Speak." She ordered.


    The assistant brought out a holographic list and began going down the list of all important matters that needed to be handled today.


    Some of them were finished and some of them had yet to be crossed over.


    "It''s been a month already, and they have yet to conclude the defensive station construction?" Zosia frowned her eyebrows as she asked, "Are theyzing around or something is interfering with them?"


    "I think the workers stopped working as hard as in the start." The assistant offered his own take, "After all, it''s been months and the royal family had yet to make a move on us."


    In other words, the workers stopped fearing for their lives and began to adapt to the situation. In the start, everyone was nervous since this was the first war they ever took part in.


    Their fear had motivated them to work extra hard to build defensive stations, so they could protect themselves from any sudden ambushes.


    However, as days went by, the nervousness went away and so as their motivation.


    "Are they stupid?!" Zosia cursed furiously, "This is the time they should be working harder than ever! It''s been months already. The royal family must have already picked up a target."


    The assistant remained quiet through her outburst as he was used to them by now. He could clearly see that she was over stressed about the royal family''s move.


    If he had to guess, he honestly believed that the royal family would probably continue remaining quiet like this.


    Nothing is deadlier than the unknown.


    The royal family was making sure to keep their ns in check and hidden so Zosia would keep stressing on which node to defend.


    "Tell them if the construction isn''t finished by next week, they will not step foot inside the defense station." Zosia ordered coldly.


    "It might cause a riot." The mentioned.


    "I hope they do." Zosia sneered, "I need to make an example of someone to keep the others in check."


    "On it." The assistant noted her order down and continued reading his report.


    Thankfully, the rest of the projects were going as nned or close to their deadline. No one was far behind like the first group.


    This put Zosia''s mind at ease a little.


    "Is that all?" Zosia inquired while returning to reading her documentation.


    "Uh..."


    The assistant hesitated to ry a piece of news that he heard from one of his subordinates, not wanting to stress her more over something that wasn''t investigated properly.


    He could see that she already had plenty on her te to handle.


    "What?" Zosia narrowed her eyes at him, "You know I don''t like having information pulled back from me."


    Upon seeing her cold stare, the assistant stopped caring about her wellbeing and reported, "One of our stream moles that have been monitoring Toppoki has told me that he had spotted a asteroid approaching it rapidly."


    "An asteroid?" Zosia knitted her eyebrows.


    "Yes." The assistant added, "It''s size is about thirty kilometers, and it is estimated to hit the in the next two months."


    The assistant seemed natural about this because he knew that Toppoki was known to have suffered many strikes from meteors and asteroids due to its strong gravitational influence.


    That''s why even though Toppoki was quite close to a wormhole that was leading to the Maganda Tribe territory, the anti-royality alliance didn''t try to ce their fleet there.


    The strong gravitational influence would make it a living hell to escape from it.


    So, they simply stationed their forces next to the wormhole and left the monitored from a far unlike what they do with the other territories.


    "An asteroid at this time?" Zosia murmured with a cautious look.


    If it was any other time, she would have simply skipped over the information since it wasn''t really that weird to have such a level of detail from the Queen Ai''s works.


    If she could replicate a quarter of the gxy, then she could replicate almost everything that happens in it as long it was in her database.


    Since it was known knowledge that Toppoki suffered a lot from meteors, then she would make it ur in the replica as well.


    However...However, Zosia had been getting edgytely due to the royal family''s passiveness.


    So, even this little small unworthy detail was of a great important in her eyes.