Chapter 7590 Tentative Conclusion

The exhausting Battle of Hypeh-Tekas II had come to an end.

Sure, combat still raged across the orbit of the alien-occupied planet, but the outcome of this engagement had already been set.

The native aliens suffered massive losses, much of them strategic in nature.

The orbital defense network was ruined. It held out longer than expected and inflicted way more damage to the combined fleet than any human wished, but once the remnants of the native alien soldiers knew they had failed, enemy resistance collapsed like falling dominoes.

There was nothing more for the minions of the Red Cabal left to defend. The mysterious planetary temple complex was the key objective on both sides. The entire battle essentially revolved around this singularly important site.

The Red Ocean aliens apparently needed to defend it in order to facilitate their nascent aliens with the Messier 87 aliens.

This very much became evident when the humans what had happened after the temple complex became utterly ruined by the Riot Mark III.

"The deathborn… have disappeared!"

"They are no longer crowding around the edges of the Minerva's Saint Kingdom anymore!"

"The remaining deathborn lords are gone! They all abandoned their physical vessels and withdrew at a speed too fast for us to intercept!"

"What?!"

That last part took everyone by surprise. The Larkinsons and other soldiers had developed quite a grudge against the deathborn and their high-ranked leaders.

In order to defend the Red Ocean against the foul and undesirable influence of these extra-galactic invaders, it became vital to squash their projected manifestations!

Their cowardly and desperate flight prevented the humans from finishing this job!

This upset a lot of people, particularly the ones who tangled directly against them such as Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson and Saint Davia Stark.

They had been harried by these exotic adversaries for a long time without being able to gain the upper hand. The current victory tasted like ashes in their mouth due to their inability to achieve any personal successes.

"The deathborn have suffered a serious blow today." Saint Commander Casella Ingvar concluded based on her own observations. "We have destroyed a major engine of reproduction. It couldn't have been easy for either groups of aliens to construct that enormous temple complex. The massive green crystal alone was a priceless treasure that should be extremely difficult and costly to reproduce. It was a strategic asset that could have been responsible for overwhelming the entire Terran frontlines with trillions of deathborn. It would have been more ideal for us to capture it intact, but its total ruination has led to a much swifter end of hostilities."

Casella based her thoughts on a number of vague and uncertain assumptions.

It was very clear that the temple complex and its mysterious power source boosted the deathborn in multiple ways.

However, much of it remained undefined.

The best guess that Ves and others could make was that it not only served as a reproduction center, but also functioned as a signal node that was powerful enough to allow weaker deathborn who currently resided in M87 to project their consciousness all the way into this dwarf galaxy!

This explained the rapid collapse and loss of organization among all of the controlled deathborn armies.

Their deathborn officers did not disappear right after the destruction of the temple complex, but they became noticeably less active.

The temple complex also shared a strong relation with the dark miasma.

While it was unfortunate that this negative influence remained active due to the fact that it was generated by an entirely different source, everyone close by somehow felt that it had lost some of its teeth.

Much of its interference effects remained just as strong as before, but many soldiers reported that they no longer felt threatened by this debilitating energy field.

Part of this response could be explained by simple acclimation. Compared to the early days, everyone had gradually grown familiar with the properties of the dark miasma. A known source of danger was ultimately much less scary than an unfamiliar source.

Experience also mattered. Many soldiers faced life-threatening situations earlier that tested their grit and courage in many ways. Those who survived this ordeal had proven their strength and resilience. Even the most brittle among them experienced some form of mental growth.

While everyone took this odd change as a good development, it was not as conclusive as everyone desired.

Ves knew without attending any post-battle briefing that any plans to assault the second strategic site in the Hypeh-Tekas System could no longer be pursued.

The combined fleet suffered too many losses.

Perhaps they still had enough strength to topple whatever defenders the native aliens and the M87 aliens had posted close to the center of the star system, but who knew whether this was truly the case.

The continued existence of the dark miasma generator meant that any form of long-range observation remained ineffective!

Sending scouts when the human forces had already lost so many mechs and starships sounded foolish as well.

After all of this fighting and after inflicting so much damage onto their enemies, the humans still suffered from information asymmetry.

In other words, the aliens effectively remained in control of the rest of the star system!

If the forces of red humanity wanted to change that, then they needed to bring in lots of reinforcements, but that was not realistic.

The destruction of the temple complex and the withdrawal of all remaining enemies had lessened the urgency of the situation.

There was no compelling reason for the Red Two to pay a huge price to the Cybernetic Empire to instantly transmit reinforcements across interstellar distances.

Perhaps an argument could be made to activate the transformed greater beyonder gate once or twice in order to secure an intact giant green crystal, but the Riot had personally eliminated this possibility.

Other strategic alien treasures and assets may still exist at the dark miasma generator, but nobody knew for certain. The mechers and the fleeters most definitely did not want to make a move based on guesswork alone.

In truth, a part of Ves hoped to drag additional forces into this whirlpool. This would make it a lot easier for the remnants of the combined fleet to return to human-occupied space in safety.

Invading a restricted star system, destroying a mysterious temple complex belonging to an entirely new group of aliens and partially ruining the arrangements of the Blackwater Summoner most definitely painted a larger target on their backs!

There was no way the regional native alien forces could afford to ignore the combined fleet anymore!

The death of multiple phase lords and the loss of so many other combat assets had also weakened the forces under the Saint Commander's leadership.

The human forces had also exposed pretty much all of their trump cards. It became a lot easier for the Red Cabal to gather enough scattered alien warfleets to confidently overwhelm the Premier Fleet and Bluejay Fleet!

Now that they all faced intense alien retaliation, persisting in the Nemesis Campaign sounded no different from committing suicide!

Casella had already begun to plan their withdrawal strategy.

The human forces had gone fairly deep behind enemy lines.

Getting out should be a lot faster than getting in so long as they refrained from wasting any further time on raiding alien depots and troop concentrations.

However, they could not afford to follow a straight or predictable route, or else they would make it easier for the Red Cabal to succeed in their interception attempt!

One of the factors that affected the success rate of this extraction happened to spark a contentious debate.

As Ves and the Dark Apostle still puzzled how the Riot Mark III managed to retrieve the tier 3 Destroyer spear after it launched its final attack, they received an incoming transmission from the Saint Commander.

"We need to decide how long we should linger in this star system and how much we should burden our surviving hulls with spoils." She explained. "One of the few highlights of this battle is that we have retained control over the battlefield. There are many opportunities to collect highly valuable spoils. Our salvage teams have already begun to retrieve pieces of superdimensional alloys. The less injured and exhausted giants have offered their assistance in cutting out the most valuable and intact phasewater organs from the deceased alien phase lords. All of these spoils alone will occupy a large amount of available capacity, especially now that we have less starships to spare."

The combined fleet could not carry as much stuff as before. Fortunately, most of the lost hulls tended to be on the smaller size. The larger vessels such as the heavy cruisers and the two capital ships still remained operational… for the most part.

That did not mean they could fit an endless amount of stuff. They needed to be thoughtful about what exactly they should bring back to friendly space.

"Rare and particularly powerful phasewater organs should be close to the top of the priority list." Ves decided. "The Phase Lord Department needs to collect more unique samples to expand and diversify its range of human-adapted equivalents. The Ascended Giants have made serious sacrifices today. They deserved to be rewarded. As for superdimensional debris, try to collect whatever you can. Both the hull-grade stuff used by our giants and the alien-grade stuff used by our enemies are valuable enough to be retrieved. We absolutely cannot let this stuff fall into the hands of the Red Cabal if we can help it. If there is not enough space in our hulls, then try to bolt them onto the surface of our starships. This should be a quick and easy way to bring them home."