Free Web NovelThree days had already passed since <The Reflector> fled.
To monitor <The Reflector>, which showed no movement, <Iris> had been deploying sensors.
They would bore into the earth and bury sensors four hundred meters underground.
What they wanted to detect were vibrations such as sound waves.
They would bury multiple long sensors around the area, each with optical fiber cable only a few millimeters in diameter and vibration-detection sections installed partway along them like nodes.
With this, even the slightest movement should become possible to confirm in detail.
“Beginning deployment of boring devices.”
In the long-range footage, multiple boring devices airlifted by transport aircraft were thrown into the air.
Until now, operations like this would have been carried out with extreme caution, but the situation was different at present.
With <The Reflector>’s movement, the surrounding threat organisms, magical beasts, and animals had apparently fallen into a state of utter chaos.
In some areas, even signs of a <Death March> had appeared.
Thanks to that confusion, however, even if <The Tree> acted openly on a large scale, there was not much danger.
Ideally, they would have liked to take this opportunity to go as far as constructing a front-line base, but apparently the <Demon Forest> was not so forgiving.
They had already deployed a large number of automated machines, but attacks were occurring in many places.
<The Tree> was not the only one moving under cover of the chaos.
Among the large threat organisms, the sharp-eyed ones seemed to have begun moving as well.
On top of that, even if they built a base on land where an enormous threat organism was buried underground, there was also the risk that it could be destroyed literally from the roots up.
At most, they could probably only build a temporary overnight fortification and suppress the area for a short time.
“Putting <The Reflector> aside for the time being...”
“The distribution of threat organisms in the surrounding area has changed significantly. Along with this, attacks on Fortress <Gladiolus> are also trending upward.”
<Ringo> nodded at Eve’s gaze and displayed data summarizing the number of attacks and related information.
The magical beast attacks on Fortress <Gladiolus> seemed to be increasing rapidly in both quality and quantity.
Apparently, there had been major movement immediately after the magic barrier began operating, and again with <The Reflector>’s approach.
Of course, they had not grasped everything, but there was no doubt that the power map of the surrounding <Demon Forest> had been stirred up considerably.
“So that’s why you want to reinforce combat capability. Hmm...”
And what <Iris> had sent over at this situation report meeting was an approval request to reinforce Fortress <Gladiolus>’s forces.
The broad contents were the deployment of newly developed multi-legged tanks and the strengthening of the fortress guns. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
“The fortress guns are just ordinary additions. Reinforcing the transport route is no problem either. Then there are the new multi-legged tanks... Well, the ones we’ve been using until now were budget versions, if you want to call them that, and we’ve worn down quite a lot of them.”
In fact, through repeated combat operations up to this point, the land forces held by <The Tree> had been significantly depleted.
That was of course partly because they had fought powerful enemies such as the Prava Divine Kingdom and <Fenrir> in rapid succession, but another factor was that replenishment had been restricted for the purpose of equipment renewal.
And the next generation of land forces would be the upgraded multi-legged tanks.
If this proposal was approved, it would likely be the first real combat deployment of the new multi-legged tanks.
“...The mass-production line for the second-generation multi-legged tanks is operating smoothly... Since the core components of the energy packs and actuators use high-performance materials, production increases will be limited, though...”
The one who had designed and mass-produced the new multi-legged tanks was Olive, who had become a manufacturing expert. Since this was the unveiling of a new model, she had been assigned as the explainer beside Eve.
“When you say high-performance materials... zero-gravity-related stuff?”
“Y-yes... And we also improved the performance of the ground-based furnaces, so their overall functions have improved...”
Olive was poor at explaining things verbally, but Eve had gotten used to it.
By asking Olive fairly precise questions, she was able to draw the information out smoothly.
<Ringo> suspected that this coddling from Eve was slowing the development of Olive’s language functions, but since it was also true that this uneven growth was involved in improving Olive’s creativity, she left it alone.
In reality, it was not causing any problems.
Information exchange between AIs was handled sufficiently by external modules.
That aside, the topic was equipment renewal.
To summarize Olive’s words, using zero-gravity alloys had produced various functional improvements, including increased energy efficiency and the ability to mass-produce superconducting materials, and as a result, the performance of the materials and components they produced had improved dramatically.
Incidentally, there had been an incident midway through where Olive continued talking for around thirty minutes about Marangoni convection in zero gravity and countermeasures against it, but the only result was that Eve became more knowledgeable about the theory of zero-gravity furnaces.
A scratch, really.
“...Any other major movements in the <Demon Forest> direction?”
“There are no other major events, Commander Ma’am. Some equipment updates are being carried out, but there are no changes to the action policy.”
As Eve asked while stroking Olive, who seemed satisfied after talking so much, <Ringo> answered.
“The United Kingdom of Aphrasia is continuing the collection and research of various materials. The Prava Divine Kingdom is in the process of finalizing its borders.”
“Both are going to take time. ...Hmm. So we have a little breathing room.”
Eve said this while looking over the information lined up on the projected display.
<The Tree>’s immediate policy decisions and resource and equipment allocation had been completed, and <The Reflector>, the greatest concern, showed no movement.
In other words, to put it plainly, she had become free.
“Come to think of it, I’ve been deliberately ignoring this.”
Eve continued as she poked the world map in front of her with one finger.
“What do we know about the other continents? Since there haven’t been any reports, I assume nothing strange is happening...”
“Yes, yes, Commander Ma’am. Correct. It did not seem that any urgent measures were required, so everything has been left pending. For the moment, resource acquisition was the top priority.”
“Right. I think we can call that resolved for now. ...Which means the next thing to aim for is space, but...”
At present, <The Tree> was in the process of adding large-scale production bases on the northern continent. With the resources produced there, they expected to secure all the elements they currently required.
After that, all that remained was to improve efficiency and increase production.
Since they now had prospects for raw materials that could be produced on the ground without special equipment, the next target would be special furnaces capable of manufacturing more advanced materials.
And for special facilities, locations unaffected by surrounding conditions such as atmosphere and gravity—preferably stable Lagrange points—would be desirable.
However, as things stood, they did not have enough spare capacity to construct large-scale facilities in such places.
“It is possible to formulate strategy under the assumption that we are in a state of war with some unknown force, but...”
“Wartime strategy’s main objective is still the annihilation of enemy forces, so the damage to domestic development is brutal. It’s the exact opposite of expanding resource production.”
At any rate, they needed to secure safe base regions and air superiority.
“The continent we’re on is this northern continent. Besides it, there are five other continents. We’re monitoring them by aerial photography, but there are no civilizations that appear especially advanced. There are some ships and the like, but no large-scale fleets have been confirmed... Which means we basically know nothing.” ƒгeewёbnovel.com
“It may be time to begin reconnaissance of the other continents.”
“We also need to develop sea routes. Come to think of it, shouldn’t <The Tree> build a fake headquarters somewhere?”
“Yes. Let us begin investigations, including that possibility.”
