After more than two thousand two hundred days and nights separated from his blood relatives, the master of the Dark Angel has finally completed a long-overdue assignment, writing a sloppy end to his last failure.

At least in his eyes, it is.

"This is already the last enemy ship, my lord, their resistance has been broken."

"This galaxy, this star sector, has been completely wiped out so far, this is the last large Randan fleet we can detect so far, and their remaining strength is hidden in the unlit halo stars of the star map."

"The intensity of the battle was not great, everything was going according to the pre-battle plan, the casualties were controlled within five hundred, there was no damage to the main battleship and important war engines, and in terms of personnel, the forty-fifth company of the Eighth Knights, as the vanguard, lost part of its strength, and may need a short rest and replenishment."

Coswayne stood beside his genetic body, he stood at the foot of the snow-white alabaster throne, showing respect to the silent lion above his head, and the deep forest voice that belonged to Caliban sang from his mouth, presenting the information and summaries clearly in front of the lion king.

The Lion King's eyes were half-squinted, and he calmly counted all the treasures that time had taken from him since Tacx's bloody defeat, while watching the last shimmers of the battle, or the slaughter, the last shreds.

The alien ships were bleeding, a stench of uncivilized beings flowing from their twisted backs full of spikes and chains, and the genogens could see the fragile engines jittling erratically, the bumpy and shaking of the damaged vortex sucking the metal tentacles unique to the Randan warships into them, wringing into pieces and fragments, until the pathetic remains filled most of the battlefield.

The Dark Angel's warships roamed the skies above the losers, discreetly and mercilessly slaughtering the dying, most of whom had shut down public communication channels that were highly susceptible to alien technology, and only had a single line of communication with the Indomitable Truth, where the genetic prototype was located.

This was necessary, and it was a lesson that was learned with a lot of blood: Randan's madness technology had cracked some of the Empire's weapons at an unknown moment, and while such cards were not used in the crucial Battle of Tax, it was now inflicting continuous damage on the Dark Angels.

The public communication channel is no longer a safe place to communicate, and the Xenomorph electronic virus is ready to attack any careless warship through it, and any Imperial ship that appears in front of them is no longer a friendly neighbor that can be fully trusted: too many deaths have proven that the Xenomorphs have just mastered the technology of disguised as Dark Angel warships, and can even avoid the double scanning of the naked eye and electronic instruments, and at least twenty lone warships have been quickly killed by their [allies] without warning, Until this scene was recorded in time by a group of sandalwood monastrals that happened to pass by.

Yes, this war is like this: everything is changing, everything is stalemate, everything is moving forward with the most difficulty in the never-ending flow of blood, and although the earth-shattering earth in the Tux system has pronounced the final death sentence on the fate of the alien empire, it is still not enough to make the overlord who was still aiming for the galaxy a few years ago give up his life, they are once again entangled in the remnants of the defeated army of the past, desperately throwing all means into the war, no longer caring about the possibility of victory and the number of sacrifices, It's just a simple, crazy hope to bleed the human empire as much as possible.

So, here comes the Dark Angel.

They came quickly.

The First Legion's Protogens had forgotten some of the advice of their blood relatives, and he could not even tolerate his legion staying on the Caliban for even a year, and the Dark Angels were soon called by the Divinity of the Primordial's orders and missions, and once again gathered almost all of their forces and rushed to the long-lost frontier of the Hazy Star Field.

It was also from that moment that all navigation north of the Caliban Sphere was temporarily banned, and the silence and trust of the Lord of Humanity gave the First Legion a reason to run amok, and they issued the strictest and broadest prohibition of passage, dragging the entire northern Silverriver into a state of dazed and darkness for a short time, until the day when their mission, which was gradually forgotten by the world, was finally completed.

Extinction area.

This is the new name, and the common name of all the offices of the First Legion, who like this simple name that is both intimidating and mysterious, to minimize the clerical hassle and unnecessary exposure from within the Empire.

And this time, everything went exceptionally well.

With the combined power of the Lord of Humanity and the Palm Sealer, the memories of Yu Randan are slowly fading in the minds of the vast majority of the Empire, or are simply being roughly sealed, and only a few lucky people and related people are able to retain some of the obscure memories of the Great Expedition that has been so horribly obstructed, to recall an Astarte Legion that never seemed to have appeared.

And among the nobler ones, among the many sons of the Lord of Men, their choices are also different: Killiman and Dorne, who are directly related to the Lost, have calmly accepted the need to seal their memories; The executioner on Fenris, after a conflicting laugh and tears, got drunk and rested, and then firmly remembered what he saw; As for the wolf shepherd god who was far away in the center of the Great Expedition, although he did not object to his father's request, he constantly doubted in his heart the strange status quo of the inexplicable disappearance of a genetic blood relative.

And the attitude of the Lord of the Dark Angels did not agree with them: Johnson did not care about the vanished brother, although his mind still clearly recorded the swift posture of the Eleventh Legion in battle, but it was not even as touching as the crying old voices in the wreckage of the alien warship in front of him.

As Randan's existence faded from the memory of the Human Empire within a few years, the legions that had once gathered in the Galactic North gradually dispersed, continuing to pursue their glory in the Great Expedition, leaving the most difficult and mysterious mission on the shoulders of the Caliban: the Dark Angels picked it up without any waves, and did not hesitate to continue the war that was already destined to be unrecorded.

Six years had passed since the Battle of Tax, and the fleet attached to Johnson had been in the darkness of the north, tracking for six years, killing for six years, and exterminating for six years.

Only a handful of human worlds have been screened by them and have the luck to become subjects of the Empire, while the rest have long been soaked in Randan's blood, most of them burned in the relentless flames, and those most valuable have to face the Black Death that falls from the sky.

It is conceivable that such a [conquest] is destined not to be too smooth, the desperate struggle of countless powerful countries and the crazy counterattack of the Randan fleet from time to time have continued in this nightmarish six years, although most of them are like ruins in front of them, wiped out under the relentless offensive of the First Legion, and can only use all their strength to cut an undetectable white mark on the black armor of the Caliban angels, and drag down a little blood in the still huge army of the First Legion, But the continuous flow of six years is enough to make such [small fights] converge into a terrible number.

A campaign of annihilation with five hundred casualties in Astarte can be nothing, but what if it is ten? Is it a hundred? Be...... More?

In the [Extinction Zone], no hopeless reality is impossible, and the flames of slaughtering all beings are scorching the Dark Angel himself as it kills countless worlds without mercy.

"Most of the battleships have only a few or a dozen torpedoes left, more than eighty percent of the Storm Bird squadrons are seriously understaffed, or the equipment is aging to the limit, and at the same time, almost all companies are suffering from delays in the operation of the command level, because the command teams of each company have been fragmented, and some company commanders do not even have a temporary adviser."

Coswayne spoke in a low voice, the tip of the iceberg of the Legion's myriad predicaments, and in his hand there were several electronic boards stacked on top of each other, which were presumably not very friendly.

"The next large-scale replenishment fleet is expected to arrive in three Terra standard days, but less than sixty percent of the cruising companies have responded to our call so far, some in areas where communication is obscure, while others may have been in trouble, and the logistics chief wants to know if he wants to find them and send a detachment to resupply them in addition, after all, this kind of behavior is very dangerous."

"One more thing: several company commanders jointly reported that they noticed that the latest Caliban recruits were wearing the latest Mark IV armor from the Empire, rather than the Mark II that was still massively installed within the Legion, and they thought that this new equipment was best concentrated in the veteran detachment responsible for front-line missions, but the Caliban recruits reacted strongly to this, and they took off their armor as an insult."

"In addition, the Kaliban side recently reported a new abnormal earthquake ......"

The news pouring out of Coswayne's mouth was nothing more than all sorts of bad news: casualties, plight, internal strife.

They seem to have existed from the beginning, but at this moment, they are so conspicuous and large that the genetic protoplasm entrenched in their throne is even a little excessively silent.

The Lion King sat on his throne, a gold-trimmed violet cape, and a set of holographic projectors around the throne, all of which were open, showing dozens of space battles in progress, all of which were in every corner of the extinction zone, mostly in abrupt encounters and desperate crushing.

Hunting, hunting, killing.

This is the norm in the extinction zone, and this is the reason for its existence: when the First Legion actually leaves here, all worlds will become the quietest and most docile and reliable people of the Lord of Humanity, because there will be no life on it that dares to radiate malice.

That's why Johnson exists.

The meaning was so hideous, and so heavy, that when Coswayne finished reporting the last message and glanced at his taciturn primordial body, he felt a distant fatigue and vigilance on his broad shoulders.

He took a step back, bowed his head, and waited for the lion king's order.

After a while, he heard a faint sigh, as if the beasts of the forest were reluctant to face a civilization that had collapsed.

"What do you think, Akau?"

Just as the Dark Angel thought, the Lion King did not give an immediate order, but threw a part of his power back to his heir once more, and one of the great claws of the lion rested on his lap, listening to Coswayne's silent thoughts and calm words.

One by one, the Lion King's henchmen spoke their answers, and his great talent, which was rare even among the warriors of Astarte, allowed him to combine force and intelligence, and was able to help the Genotypes solve the Legion's dilemma: in most cases, his advice, though not a cure, was enough to make the discerning Knight King nod his head secretly, but in the face of the most difficult questions, Coase had to pause in shame and spit out a few temporary gestures to stop the boiling.

To be sure, as an Imperial Angel born to fight, Coss's performance is enough to make any Genogen Blue-Eyed: but unfortunately, as the head of the First Legion, Coswayne has a powerful and all-powerful [former director] who is almost impossible to surpass or compare, a master of the First Legion in another sense.

And even more unfortunately, just six years ago, just before the [former director] did not fly solo by himself, his genetic father under the [indulgence] and [support] of the silver-haired lady, lived a rather expensive life for more than ten years, and Johnson, who had just taken over the legion, had not had time to really familiarize himself with all the details of the legion's management, and the gold medal assistance that fell from the sky made the Calibans happily preoccupied with the long war with Ran Dan.

At the beginning, everything may have revealed a kind of Caliban-esque rigor, but since that showdown, the genetic protoplasm has consciously or unintentionally opened up the magic of blood relatives.

Logistics is a number that doesn't need to be paid attention to, supply is never a matter of concern, the vast sea of friendly troops is the presence that only needs to be seen on the battlefield, and in those times when there is no war, maybe they are a group of photosynthesizers who don't need to eat.

Battleships fell like drops in a rainstorm, the consumption of the god's machinery was like a handful of mud and sand, countless worlds with glorious histories and significance were arbitrarily divided into war zones, just to make the possibility of victory more insignificant proportions, and those astronomical logistical supplies and weapons consumption, all it took was a simple order written to the chief of internal affairs, and they would appear like magic in the battleship's warehouse.

When the dance of war gradually entered the climax of fate, the king of Caliban, who originally had his eyes on the whole legion, was also accustomed to standing in front of the star map for a long time, showing his talent and quality to the fullest, planning one bloody and cruel apocalypse performance after another on the galactic stage, completely ignoring how many minefields his wanton actions had accumulated: these minefields had never exploded on him anyway, just as no letter of accountability from the Casting World or the War Council would reach Johnson's desk, After all, the automatic delivery address has long been changed to next to the housekeeper's fully automatic coffee machine.

In the later stages, the Genogen will even be pleasantly surprised to find that when his thoughts are churning again and preparing for the next apocalyptic war, he will see that the materials that are enough to support the battle have already been placed in the Legion's warehouse, and even more than enough, after those logistics supplies that exceed his expectations several times over, it seems that there is a haggard face that has become more skilled because of the passage of time, and has even learned to prevent problems before they happen.

Who can live up to that face?

Even the genetic prototype had to sigh like this.

Therefore, although he knew that this was enough material to support several battles, Johnson still decided to take them all and use several times the storage to win a smoother battle, so that the immortal war could be far away from the territory of the empire as soon as possible.

As for the empty warehouse by him, and the chaos of the long supply lines that this scene implied, the countless plans and plans, the changes and complaints in the various casting and logistics worlds, and the angry roar of cats from the internal affairs office, these are things that the Lord of the Dark Angels does not care about at all.

He immediately let Morgan fight alongside him in this battle, and in front of her, at the cost of several Titans, won an unimaginable victory: she did not seem to be dissatisfied or complaining, and the speed and efficiency of the Internal Office was as impressive as ever, and over time he even regarded it as a habit, a duty that the Internal Office should have done.

So, when the war situation turned bad again, he did not hesitate to make a trade-off: let his internal affairs chief add a small squad, so that he could devote all his energy to military affairs.

This all-encompassing newbie package lasted for more than a decade, occupying most of Johnson's years as a genetic protogen, so much so that when Coswayne barely sorted out the Legion's internal affairs with the help of Morgan's shadow and the countless supporting documents left by the Spider Empress, and then put them on Johnson's desk, the Lord of the First Legion was at a loss that he had never felt before.

Johnson's cognition was confused.

Shouldn't this kind of thing be something that the chief of internal affairs can eliminate by himself?

As for the scope of the Legion's internal affairs......

Except for the battle, isn't everything else the internal affairs of the legion?

……

Although the genogen didn't say it explicitly, Coswayne easily read the information in his face that was enough to be called [stunned].

The Lion King's henchmen couldn't even bear to tell his lord that he thought his task was to take care of all the housekeeping, and that the Genogen would take care of it all on his own.

And so, in the midst of this two-way silence and trust, the position that belonged to one woman weighed on the shoulders of the two men, and at the very moment it nearly destroyed their will, which had not yet been honed by the papers: when the king of Caliban, with his talent and tenacity as an original, barely adapted to breathe in the sea of papers, a question suddenly occurred to him.

Morgan is gone.

But he might be able to create another Morgan.

The best goal is undoubtedly ......

The old face of Caliban, named Luther, crossed the mind of the genetic protogen, and it was only then that Johnson realized that he had sent Luthor to the Far Eastern Frontier as an envoy, and the object of the envoy was ...... It seems to be his first head of internal affairs.

I don't know what happened to Luther's mission and situation, but hopefully he can get used to the emptiness of the Far Eastern Frontier a little.

The original body rubbed his brows, and then turned his gaze to Coswayne to the side.

Luckily, Coswayne never disappoints, and with the end of the Battle of Tuckers, there weren't that many huge documents that belonged to the Home Office.

The Genogen struggles to gnaw at the countless dossiers left behind by his blood relatives while directing his legions, continuing the horrific slaughter in the extinction zone, searching for the possible location of the Randan's home planet and his mad brother.

This is not an easy thing to do, especially the more urgent Randan Empire, whose home planet seems to be hidden in a remote corner of the northwestern galaxy, and even in the golden age of mankind, there is very little knowledge of it.

The Dark Angel had to choose a more secure method: any star zone infested with Randan's soldiers in Qingguang would one day be able to eliminate the location of their home planet.

The entire western part of the hazy star field was thus divided into countless small grids, and the fleet of dark angels and the alien army that grew like weeds were engaged in a boring grid game, and every time a grid was completely filled with hundreds of millions of blood, it meant that the destruction of the Ran Dan Empire had taken another firm step.

For six years, the grid game has been running steadily and relentlessly, constantly devouring the lives of both sides, tens of thousands of Dark Angels have never had a chance to take off their armor, hundreds of First Legion warships have never been able to reply to the Indomitable Truth's inquiries, and in an extinction zone where time has lost its meaning, it seems that only the eternal, hostile loneliness is the only companion of the Dark Angel.

But on this very day, even loneliness was taken away.

"Twentieth Legion?"

Coswayne withdrew from Johnson's throne room, but quickly returned with a message of his visit.

Johnson looked at the information, his brow furrowed.

The message was short, short enough to be described in one sentence: an envoy of the Twentieth Legion calling himself Alfaris, eager to meet the Dark Angel's genetic protogen.

Johnson had heard of the Twentieth Legion: a question mark, a ghost, a ghost army that could only be circulated in a few words, a group of ecstasies that didn't even have their own genetic protoplasms, a legion that might or may not exist.

He didn't think he had anything to talk about with the group, but ......

"Bring him to me, Akau."

"Yes, sir."

——————

The man called himself Alfaris: he was dressed in a suit of Mark IV armor, which, like the ship he was on, without any ornamentation to identify himself, made the already high vigilance of the king of Caliban almost reach a critical point.

The Genomorph left behind his henchmen and motioned for Coswayne to place his hand on the hilt of his sword without concealment, revealing an unspoken attitude.

To which the visitor responded, he was greeted only with an obnoxious polite smile, and he was quick to say that he had not come empty-handed, but had brought a generous gift.

An elite company, and the strength of the entire legion that followed: a generous gift indeed, and even Johnson himself could not refute this conclusion, but it was not enough to make him smile at it, because an additional condition was tied to the gift.

"So, let me understand your words a little, ghost: you want me to accept the legion behind you, commanding the forces and fleets of both legions, in order to end the long war with the Randan Empire as soon as possible."

"Exactly."

The smile under the bald head could even be called sincere, but it did not let Johnson's frowning brow relax for half a minute.

"Each legion has its own mission, its own area and its own objectives, and this is one of the reasons why my brothers won't patronize these backcountry, so what else is there to allow you to join my war zone besides orders from my father?"

"This is an invisible right of the Twentieth Legion, Lord of the Lions, we are eager to see the destruction of Randan and the victory of the Great Expedition, and we can also use our own choices to move it all to come."

"Your rights?"

"You can think of it as a license, or a tacit approval, or a small difference that each legion has, that distinguishes us from the same noble purpose."

The visitor who identified himself as Alfaris continued to smile, a confident glow flickering in his pupils.

He was answered by the lion king's silence, and a long sneer later.

"You know, Alpharis, your words remind me of a man."

"An old man?"

"Yes, an old man, she has always impressed me and cannot be forgotten, and her words have always been like this, showing off a kind of arrogance that dances wantonly on the edge of the red line."

[she] made the visitor's brow move, and before Alphahris could say anything, the Lord of the First Legion took out his saber and placed it across his knees, caressing it intentionally or not.

"I have tried to kill her, with roaring steel and my sword, and the cause of her death will be unbridled arrogance, and uncontrollable danger: an unforgivable sin."

"But at the moment of the execution, she spoke her defense, she provided a perfect confession, and she made the execution that was so sure to be stopped, because her exoneration was so impeccable, that it is the only reason in the galaxy for people like you to live."

"But alas, I haven't seen such a reason in you."

"So, from now on, you'd better start telling the truth, boy, for your own sake."

The long silence and solemnity accompanied the declaration of the Caliban lingered in the throne room for a long time, and just as the Lord of the First Legion raised his head slightly, proud of his disguised victory, he saw the visitor take a few steps back and speak solemnly.

He met the gaze of the genotype.

"You will be the commander of the war, my lord,"

The sonorous words echoed in the space, and this time, it was the lion who was silent.

“……”

“……”

"Commander?"

Johnson cautiously spoke.

"Is this the vocabulary you learned in the Second Legion?"

The abrupt question caused Alpharis to pause, first to reflect on it, then to shake his head.

"You may not know enough, but in the past six years, as the progress of the Great Expedition has progressed day by day, more and more people have realized that as the monarch of the Empire, the Emperor will never always appear on the front line of the battlefield as a commander, so when the Lord of Humanity returns to Divine Terra, a position to stand out from the original equal genetic prototype and coordinate the Great Expedition is imminent."

The envoy of the Twentieth Legion said this bombshell solemnly, he estimated the lethality of the word to the Lord of the First Legion, but what surprised him somewhat was that when he solemnly explained the origin of the commander, the first expression on Johnson's face appeared......

It seems to be a sigh of relief.

Thankfully, this strange laxity turned into the seriousness that Alpharis expected, which allowed him to continue talking.

"Maybe it's the Emperor's personal election, maybe it's the vote of the genetic protogens, or maybe it's the hero that everyone will silently recognize in the future conquest: whatever the outcome of the selection, there is no doubt about it."

"If you want to be a war commander, then you can't continue to destroy your legions in this battle, and if you continue to suffer such huge casualties, you will not be able to surpass some of the other legions again, who are developing their own power behind your sacrifice, claiming to be worthy of the title of war commander with their brilliant achievements and rapidly expanding power."

"There are many of your brothers who are determined to attain this title."

"Like the Lord of the Thirteenth Legion, he is but a pale reflection of you, but who can deny the enormity of the five hundred worlds today? Who can deny this: when the king of Otrama can sit on 200,000 or more Astarte warriors, it will not be a safe choice to hand him the title of war commander. ”

"And the Tenth Legion, from Medusa's Iron Hand, who has surpassed the torrent of Ferus in these years? His cold and ruthless style of war has long been admired as art by those ignorant and ignorant, because they cannot see your war in the dark, and how can Gorgon, who also does not see all this, voluntarily quit the pursuit of the commander? ”

"And, oh, the mighty Shadow Moon Wolf, the first son of the Emperor in the mouth of the Kthunians, who has the honour of being the first to step into this great expedition on the stage, and who claims to be the chief of the Legion and the Primordial, who will convince him to hand over this imaginary property when the word warlord is raised?"

"My lord, they are all waiting, they are all fighting, they are all trying to take the crown that belongs to you into their arms, and you are doing the opposite: you are letting it slip away."

"It will do you no good to remain in the darkness, my lord, is the blood of Tak not enough to sustain your reputation, although most people have forgotten it, but the truly intelligent will remember your dedication in the Second Randan War, and they will not doubt you."

"Please don't hesitate, you just need to withdraw your forces now and let us do the rest of this task, and you can restore the number of the legions at this time, let the dark angels return to their former glory, and throw the most powerful First Legion into the Great Expedition, you will shock everyone in ten years, all the legions combined cannot match your glory."

"After all, there is one thing that even we cannot deny: if you continue to stay in this darkness, spending your strength and time, without enough obvious honor and victory, then the crown of the commander will be doomed to you, and no one will be able to support a brother who they do not know the details and victory."

"Who will support you unreservedly? Lord of those who indulge in prayer and the Whisperers? Or the barbarian king of Fenris? Or are they those wind chasers who see the head of the dragon and can't see the tail? They are not familiar with you at all, and they have never heard of your name. ”

"Even the Primordial who once fought alongside you, the Avalonian tyrant who once witnessed true power under the banner of the First Legion? Will she? I've heard of her wanton expansion in the Far East, planting three sectors under her banner, and who's to say that her heart doesn't burn with the desire to be a war commander? ”

"Who's to say: she will choose to support you? Will you choose to respond to you? ”

"Did she make a promise? Have you ever made a vow? Has there ever been blood shed with you? ”

Alfaris said.

“……”

Johnson, on the other hand, was silent.

But this is not a persuasion, or rather, it is destined to be a tiradate that will fail.

Coswayne thought so.

For he had seen a scene which the visitors of the Twentieth Legion had not seen when they were compiling their discourse.

When the Dark Angel's protogenogen sat in his seat, listening to Alfaris's words, when he heard the doubts about the Spider Queen, and those topics such as Promise, Oath, and Blood, when he heard if Morgan would support him in the selection of the commander.

A fleeting light swept across Johnson's pupils, an unquestionable conclusion echoing in the mind of the genetic proto.

It was a faint mockery.

and endless self-confidence.

(End of chapter)