Chapter 8

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Chapter 8: The Great War of the Gods

For humans, depletion of resources does not mean that there are no resources left at all, as portrayed in many works. In reality, except for fuel that is directly burned, resources that have been turned into goods do not truly disappear from human society. It’s just that the difficulty and cost of recycling them are higher than excavating new resources. And this value comparison exists in any social system, even in the so-called ultimate society. If the value contained in the general labor that humans put into the recycling process is higher than developing new resources, these "garbage" will still not be utilized.

For Lapite rats, they are better at recycling garbage and scrap than mining for new minerals. Perhaps their ancestors were good at it, but they themselves have completely neglected this innate talent. This may also be related to the living environment of the mouse people. In their world, if mining is done too much, it is easy to collapse the dome or cause underground water issues, leading to one city after another collapsing. This is why they focus more on recycling. After all, if humans dig underground empty, they will just create a big pit, worst-case scenario fill it with water or build a power station.

However, if the mouse people dig too deep and cause collapses, they will truly cut off their living space. Their sun is just a red giant star, with very limited heat, and the surface is always covered in thick snow. That’s why on their mother planet, the ecology has only evolved rodent-like animals, because the more advanced parts have exceeded the capacity of the ecosystem. It is impressive that these tiny beings can still evolve intelligence and develop civilization in such conditions. Once the underground dome collapses, exposing them to the ice and snow on the surface, the mouse people won’t survive even one winter and will collectively perish.

"So, you plan to import… our garbage?" This is not a shameful thing, in fact, many countries have done it, as mentioned before, so-called garbage is just misplaced resources or ones with high costs. For example, China has also imported overseas garbage, this is a very common international trade, "Will you pay with this… coin?"

"Sniff sniff ~ Sniff ~ Yes, yes, that’s right, that’s right, exchange with this shiny, glowing thing! Everyone, everyone likes it." The mouse people like it too, but they prefer things they can eat, "You, lots of scrap, garbage, many, many, I can help you, sniff sniff, deal with them."

It has to be said that this proposal did indeed appeal to many people, such as the Japanese. They had to develop nuclear power to sustain their energy needs, but the generated nuclear waste and various household garbage lacked enough land to bury. They could only pile it up and then each time delude themselves by raising safety standards or reluctantly pay a high price for the neighboring China to help deal with it.

It’s been many years since the good things about paying money to deal with garbage have happened. However, before the agreement was reached, there were some small problems facing the two races. That is the death of 110 construction workers on the space station. These rats must be held accountable for this matter. You can’t just say sorry and make a mistake and expect to get away with it, right? Even though these rats are good at surrendering and being soft, some things still need an explanation.

Of course, the people from the previous empire are still figuring out what to say. Firstly, only the black guys are dead. The big countries don’t want to help the bad guys. Secondly, the human space fleet is not ready yet. They need to finish their first practice and fight with other smart thinkers before they feel strong enough to send friendly ships to talk to the empire about the bad things they did. Depending on the talk results, they will decide whether to be nice or not nice to the empire.

"What do you want? Smell, what’s the price?"

"You have to bring out the bad guy who started the fight and let us judge them."

"No, no problem!" The mouse person agreed very quickly, which made the humans who thought there would be arguments for a while feel a bit surprised. "And you have to compensate the victims…"

"Smell~ No, we don’t have enough food, and our spaceship doesn’t have enough fuel. We need to bring back food so the mother mice can have baby mice, smell~ no good."

"…" Who told you we want your food? If you didn’t mention it, we would have thought it was waste and fertilizer!

"Gold, silver, rare metals, or equivalent information are all acceptable."

"No problem! We’ll pay with shiny things!"

When a star transitions from the main sequence stage to the old age stage of a red giant, it will have multiple to dozens of supernova explosions. This means that on such planets, heavy metals resources will be relatively abundant, but also buried deeper. For the Mouse People, this is not a big problem, especially since they have accumulated gold over the past thousand years, at least enough for compensation.

Since the Mouse People collect scrap, even though they have some funds to exchange loot with the victors, it is still not enough compared to the demands of humans. So, they first pay some compensation in advance, then specially transport a load of gold to settle the negotiated garbage disposal issue.

As for the issue of trying war criminals, the Mouse People readily handed over a large number of relevant individuals including big-headed rats, scribes, storm mice, clan chiefs, and related slave rats. This level of cooperation surprised the humans who initially thought the other side would delay and only provide a few cannon fodder.

As for negotiating the price of purchasing scrap materials, the Mouse People’s bids were quite generous, well, by human standards. For example, on Earth, raw steel only costs a few cents per pound from the factory. When converted to Soft Sister Coins, the price the Mouse People offered for buying scrap steel and iron was around three to four Soft Sister Coins per pound, making the mayor of Tangshan City almost ask, "Do you want new steel? I can offer it at a cheaper price, one Soft Sister Coin per pound, with discounts for bulk purchases!"

However, there were some types of garbage that they couldn’t sell, such as polyethylene plastics and polymer products, for which the Mouse People only offered the lowest prices. Interestingly, items that are not very valuable in human society, especially vast amounts of gourds, algae, straw, and similar things, were priced very generously by the Mouse People. In their view, these items could serve as food or indirectly as food (fermentation by microbes, growing mushrooms, and so on).

"Long-handed gadgets, good, very good… need handling, waste materials, feel free, feel free to come to us, sniff~"

Besides a pile of dirty coins that may require thorough disinfection, purification, and high-temperature re-melting, the Mouse People also left a relatively detailed and comprehensive interstellar map compared to the mystical scriptures of the Imperials. They thoughtfully marked several planets where the Mouse People dump garbage, indicating that any human junk that cannot be disposed of can be thrown there, as the Mouse People are not picky eaters.

"Those stinky evil dwarfs with disgusting pustules have since crawled under those hairless demons, bringing plague, death, and destruction to every world they touch, along with their terrifying and repulsive squeaks; they are shadows from the chaos, the dark carpets constantly spreading under the demon king’s feet…" – "Chronicles of the Dark Millennium War"

September 30, 2075 AD

After the mice people’s big funny show, the exercise that was supposed to start at the end of August was postponed by a month. It wasn’t until the end of September that a space area was marked out near the lunar orbit for both sides to use for their fight. To avoid civilians making mistakes on some tactical knowledge issues and causing the military to win by cheating, the exercise directing department provided both sides with staff teams of similar quality. The brainstorming side only needed to give the general direction, and the specific tactics were to be completed by the staff team – even though those experienced veteran staff members had a hard time getting used to this civilian style of commanding.

Since the purpose of this exercise was more inclined towards tactics and equipment design, a too complicated environment and too much depth were not set for both sides, to avoid the (inevitable) victory of the military due to the gap in strategic operations. In terms of the number of participants, the Red Army played by the military was also limited to a relatively small scale. They portrayed a human civilization with few warships and acting alone, while the Blue Army from various industries, including some old rivals, played a variety of alien races, overwhelmingly outnumbering them.

However, these were only for professionals. For the onlookers and gossipers, no matter what, the orderly and majestic warships of the military, like the "Spear of Destiny," were more stylish and awe-inspiring. Whereas those in front of them… well, those fleets that even the mice people thought were a disorganized bunch felt like representatives waiting to be defeated in one fell swoop.

Then, three minutes into the opening scene, the Red commander was informed by the directing department, "Your fleet has been hit by a super long-range and super strong laser beam, your flagship is hit, retreat." So, just when the Red fleet had familiarized themselves with operating the warships, not even pressing a button yet, they were guided to the side by the guiding ship and the "Killed in Action" mark was raised in the data link.

"Wait, I didn’t even see anyone, how did I get hit? Is their radar so sneaky?"

"The enemy used point-to-point relay shooting, passing the laser beam through multiple ships’ cooperation, eventually forming a laser beam with sufficient effective range outside your detection range and hitting your flagship." On the monitor, multiple umbrella-shaped ships slowly folded their umbrellas and started entering cooling mode.

"Wait, this doesn’t make sense, if they transmit like this, how do they achieve zero loss when the laser is reflected, and how do they complete so many relays?" The Red commander argued logically, this is too mystical, what kind of magical fire control and mysterious focusing technology is this?

"Well, theoretically, on the third relay, they would kill their own people due to the deviation of the beam, on the fourth relay, the beam intensity would be enough to destroy the umbrella surface and commit suicide, and on the second relay, due to the rapid heating of the umbrella surface exposing their position, you would discover them."

"So…?"

"Hmm, so this is a problem with human technology limits and design, how do you know aliens can’t do it?"

"……."

"Any other questions?"

"No!" The commander of the red team gritted his teeth, "Let’s continue the exercise."

Next, the red team formation was bombarded with piles of nuclear bombs dropped by a mysterious wave of drones that appeared through a "hyperspace jump," "Oh my goodness!"

Inside the red team’s command headquarters, there was silence. Although they were mentally prepared for the aerial strike, it was more in line with everyone’s sense of justice than hiding in the background radiation, lined up in a Z formation tens of thousands of kilometers away, passing on laser relay, enhancing, and then using a magical spell to blow up the flagship. However, suddenly announcing the appearance of attack aircraft equivalent to ten squadrons just 20 kilometers away from my ship without warning, what does that mean?

Magic targeting, mystic accuracy, unpredictable movements, and successful on-the-spot tactics, the red team experienced one after another. Along with the improvisation of those brainy auxiliary commanders under the deliberate indulgence of the directing department, the style of "2075 Space Joint Exercise: Sword Test" quickly transitioned from "War of Gods" to "Twilight of the Gods."

However, whether it was protests or complaints, they were of no use. The exercise had to be repeated time and time again, each time being pounded by the biased dice of the referees, and the selective view of the directing department, hammered by the blue team. The only thing the red team commander could do was wipe away tears, gulp down a whole bag of coffee, rally the staff teetering on the brink of mental collapse, redraw battle plans, gather the support of engineering and research teams, make targeted equipment adjustments, and then be persuaded to retire again by some unexpected turn of events.

Equipment plans, personnel arrangements, troop formations changed repeatedly, under magical targeting and mystic accuracy, maneuverability and armor defense were completely disregarded. Even with the engineering team’s modifications, the opponent’s laser beams could not penetrate the multiple layers of nitrogen-reactive armor after melting through the outer layers, then accurately knock out the reactor. Moreover, when the nuclear reactor was damaged, it would shut down rather than explode due to loss of pressure.

However, it was useless. The referee team judged that your armor was like paper, easily pierced by the opponent’s spear. Your movements were predictable, while the opponent could anticipate your moves half a minute in advance. Your reactions and control center were vulnerable, ready to explode upon impact. What could you do? Nothing could be done. You were a great commander. So, you went back to think of strategies, tactics, and improvements – who knew what kind of weapons the aliens used? Those drones were just a warning. The idea of a radiation cannon had never crossed anyone’s mind.