Chapter 805, Burning
The anti-demon war in the three star regions of Devouring Stars to the north of the Alliance lasted a relatively short time, only six months, from the beginning to the end of the Battle of the Oath Star.
From a temporal perspective, the war was an outstanding victory.
The scale of this invading Chaos army is terrifying, even not weaker than the peak Ironclad Wars. Among them are some Chaos Space Marines, powerful Chaos Possessed Daemons, and Khorne Vanguards... Its leader is a Khorne Daemon Prince, who may have been a Space Marine from a Khorne Warband.
This one person alone caused enormous damage to the human defense line.
The fall of three planets was related to him. Those worlds could have been defended under the fierce attack, but because of the attack personally joined by this demon prince, the two dual-wielded blood axes dug a huge hole in the human defense line that could not be blocked, leading to the total collapse of the planet's defense line.
Its strength is extremely rare. When the third planet fell, the human side had actually foreseen the problem of being attacked by the demon prince.
The Ghost Shark Regiment has been waiting here for a long time.
Ghost Shark is a new regiment created by Gu Hang. After announcing the establishment of the Dark Side Control Committee of the Empire, he claimed that he had all the highest powers in the Dark Side of the Empire. So, naturally, establishing a new regiment should be the authority that they should have.
Originally, Gu Hang was hoping that this method could be recognized by the system.
This can be considered as establishing a war group, right? Then, should a new war group be added to the [War Group] interface?
It didn't.
It seems that the [System] does not approve of this way of establishing a new battle group.
As for the current 'Ghost Shark', it is indeed a new group that Gu Hang recently announced to build. And the Space Marine seed of this new group, as the name suggests, comes from the Blood Shark.
When the Blood Sharks were recognized by the system as a chapter of the Alliance, Gu Hang had the quota to exchange two thousand Space Marines for seeds.
This quota includes the current members of Blood Shark. Regardless of whether the seed has grown into a Space Marine or is just a seed; regardless of whether the seed is exchanged or grown naturally. In short, as long as it reaches 2,000, Gu Hang will not be able to exchange this type of seed from the system.
Before this, Gu Hang had more than 1,300 blood shark seeds in total. About half of them were exchanged by Gu Hang and added to the blood shark regiment, and the other half were "born" by the blood sharks themselves.
But no matter where the seeds came from, they are now in Gu Hang's hands.
This is how the Alliance manages the warband. Since the Blood Shark Warband has become a part of the Alliance, receiving resource support from various alliances and living a comfortable life, it must hand over all its gene seeds.
At first, the Blood Sharks felt a little uncomfortable. For ordinary warbands, the gene-seed tax paid to the Empire was only one-tenth; for the Blood Sharks, during their long experience in the Dark Outer Realm, that was a long period of accumulated tax that had not been paid.
Naturally, they would not be happy to ask them to pay all the extra seeds now.
But there were many reasons to convince them. The seeds would be safe in the hands of the Alliance, and the Alliance would always ensure that the number of personnel in the war group would be around 1,000. Over the past few decades, the Alliance had never broken its promise.
They gradually came to believe it.
Even if the Alliance used their gene seeds to build a second regiment, they had no major objections. On the one hand, after so many years, more than half of the Blood Sharks were already Alliance members, and their loyalty was much higher than before. In addition, the name used by Gu Hang was to build a new bloodline for them. Not only was the name very similar, but he also invited some senior members of the regiment to serve as the top leaders of the new regiment.
This even includes the role of Ghost Shark's Chapter Leader, which was given to the old man of Blood Shark.
This completely convinced the Blood Shark to agree to use its own seeds to build a new group.
After all, they also recognized Gu Hang's authority.
The same situation was with the Dragon King's Spear Regiment. Gu Hang used their dragon legion seeds to build a new regiment, named the Dragon Queen's Shield.
These two chapters, together with the three chapter construction quotas previously granted to Gu Hang by the Empire, made up a total of eight chapters built using those seeds. These were the new batch of Space Marine chapters built by Gu Hang, also known as the 'Dark Side Army'.
Ghost Shark and Dragon Queen's Shield are also the main force of the Space Marines heading north to fight against the Chaos Army.
The head of the Ghost Shark's regiment, who was once the captain of the third company of the Blood Shark, was an old warrior with 500 years of combat experience. He was the main force in this ambush on the demon prince. He brought with him 200 elite Ghost Sharks.
However, the operation failed.
Even the first chapter leader of the Ghost Shark Regiment was beheaded by a battle axe in a head-on duel.
The final battle to destroy the demon prince was in the trap of Oasis. The leader under Khorne was too easily overwhelmed and liked to fight on the front line himself. This also gave Roel Deliu an opportunity to use the extermination weapon to destroy the leader of the Chaos Demon Army.
The death of this demon prince is the key to the battle.
Another key point is that they caused great damage to the demon army in just six months. They ran into the alliance's defense line and attacked frantically, and their own casualties were also very huge.
The leader was dead and the casualties were huge. The combination of these two factors meant that even if the Khorne army wanted to continue fighting, they had actually lost their ability to attack and could only retreat unwillingly.
But on the other hand, the military force that the alliance handed over to Deliu was a considerable force.
Not only were the four regional defense forces in the northern part of the alliance, including Liao Guang and Gu Cheng, assigned to him, but Gu Hang also assigned him a powerful legion. Both the navy and the army had sufficient manpower.
A simple comparison will make it clear. In the middle of the Iron Armor War, the total number of troops deployed by the Alliance in the war was probably only slightly less than the troops controlled by Deliu, and they were basically at the same level. After the war, this force was only a little bit left, and it can even be said that it was basically lost.
From this perspective, this seems to be a victory that is hard to praise, or even a tragic victory.
But after careful consideration, Gu Hang still gave rewards and honors to Rawl Deliu, a veteran who almost burned himself out in the war.
He was granted a special promotion to become one of the Alliance's Marshals, skipping the rank of General from Admiral.
He was awarded various medals and was also scheduled to be appointed commander-in-chief of the Dark Side Expedition's northern front after he recovered.
Although the coalition army suffered heavy losses under his command, the strategic goal was achieved anyway.
Looking at the various decisions made by this veteran during the war, there was actually no big problem. We can even praise him for doing a pretty good job.
As for the huge sacrifices, the bigger reason is that the enemy is indeed tough and difficult to deal with, and due to the characteristics of the Khorne Demon Army, they are particularly good at and prefer this kind of fierce attack. If the Alliance wants to hold on, it will inevitably suffer heavy losses. There is no way around it.
Moreover, to put it more coldly, the loss is the loss.
In the past, when the alliance only had one core territory, the Dragon Eagle Star Region, this kind of loss was unacceptable. With such a small area, such a small population, and such limited production capacity, the army that had been accumulated for more than ten years would be severely damaged if it was sent away in one wave. If it wanted to accumulate the same number of troops again, it would take another ten or even dozens of years. In the meantime, it was unknown how many opportunities for development, growth, and expansion would be missed.
But now, it is different.
This army is, of course, a very valuable and huge force. Losing it quickly would be very painful for the Alliance, but as long as the war does not spread to the Alliance's homeland, it will not cause any serious damage.
One year later? Two years later? Three years at most, all the losses will be recovered.
Especially when the alliance's wartime system becomes more and more intense and the war potential is further stimulated, the speed at which the alliance's troops are intensively developed and the speed at which warships are produced will be further strengthened on the current basis.
The price is totally acceptable.
While withdrawing the troops that had been fighting on the front lines for half a year at an extremely high intensity and whose battles were many times more brutal than the dark side expedition to the west, for rest and recuperation, Gu Hang began to formally consider the Three Star Domain in the Star-Swallowing Universe as the next stage target of the dark side expedition.
At the very least, a buffer zone should be built around the border of the Alliance and between the Scarlet Spot, to avoid being caught off guard again when such a large Chaos Army rushes out.
To be honest, if the Alliance had discovered the Khorne army two years earlier, giving them two years to manage and build defenses, there would have been no need for the war to become so tragic.
However, Rawl Delio rejected Gu Hang's appointment.
It wasn't because he was discouraged or disgusted with war, it was simply because his body couldn't take it anymore.
The so-called 'burning out' is really a very appropriate adjective for him.
When he had the rejuvenation surgery, he was already quite old, so the effect of the surgery was not fully exerted. And this time, he did not rest for hundreds of hours at a time, relying purely on nutrients and mental drugs to keep up his spirits and persevere.
Now he is almost at the end of his rope.
Marshal Deliu, who was lying in the sanatorium, was diagnosed with a life expectancy of no more than ten years. Moreover, although there was a chance of a second rejuvenation operation, the probability of success was much lower than that of an ordinary person.
Gu Hang demanded that the best technology, the most outstanding rejuvenation surgery performer, and the best materials must be used to extend Deliu's life.
He still hopes that the veterans who have experienced this war and accumulated profound experience in large-scale troop combat can continue to play a role.
In particular, Gu Hang could see that after this battle, Deliu's level not only rose to LV8, but his rarity also rose from the original S level to SS.
I really can't bear to lose such an excellent "worker".
Although the current Dark Side Expedition has not yet encountered a battle of the scale of the Battle of the Covenant, it is almost inevitable in the foreseeable future.
Especially when the expedition enters deep water areas and fights in areas where Chaos erosion is particularly serious.
There would be more than one war like this going on at the same time. The more experienced generals like Deliu, the better.
(End of this chapter)
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