Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones-Chapter 290: The Only Hope Of Winning

The vast void of the space battlefield had become a celestial maw—a black hole that refused to be filled. No matter how many millions of tons of steel and flesh were thrown into it, the darkness merely swallowed them whole and demanded more.

Neither Tom nor the Mechanical Disaster had a choice. Retreat was death.

The war had devolved into a grim calculus: production speed versus destruction rate. Whoever faltered first would be erased from the cosmos.

On the Third Planet and the dozen satellite worlds under Tom’s control, the surface teemed with activity. Billions of clones moved like a tide of industrious ants, their lives reduced to a binary cycle of work and brief rest.

To squeeze out every ounce of industrial capacity, Tom issued a ruthless decree: seal the agricultural domes and livestock pens.

Real food was a luxury the war effort could no longer afford. The clones were switched entirely to synthetic starch and vat-grown protein. It was a miserable existence, but it reduced the logistical strain of food supply by over 80%.

In the grand scheme of the planetary economy, this saved less than one ten-thousandth of total energy capacity. To most, it would seem statistically insignificant.

To Tom, it was everything.

He didn’t stop there. In the barracks, bunk heights were lowered by 20% to reduce construction materials. Air conditioning and life support were throttled down, shaving off another millionth of energy consumption.

Tom acted like the stingiest landlord in history, counting every kilowatt and every gram of ore. Every fraction of a percent saved was immediately funneled into the roar of the war machine.

Countless nuclear fusion plants screamed at red-line capacity day and night. Maglev heavy-duty trains tore across the planet at tens of thousands of kilometers per hour. Deep underground, the Poseidon AI strip-mined the crust at maximum efficiency, while quantum computers in the supercomputing bases boiled with heat, their cooling systems struggling to keep up.

All for one purpose: Feed the black hole.

In orbit, the cost of this production was paid in silence.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

One battleship after another detonated into debris. Fortresses that had taken months to build were vaporized in seconds.

The Mercury-class battleships were treated as nothing more than cheap consumables, thrown into the meat grinder to plug gaps in the defensive line. The Venus-class ships were effectively obsolete, disregarded in the face of such overwhelming firepower.

Only the Earth-class battleships held tactical value, executing complex maneuvers before they, too, were inevitably swarmed and destroyed.

Despite the terrifying casualty rate, Tom remained firmly pinned down.

He had the numbers. He had the home-field advantage. But the enemy had the tech. With the Havilah Civilization backing the Mechanical Disaster, their technological superiority and intelligence networks were suffocating.

If the physical battlefield was a slaughter, the digital one was a massacre.

The unmanned drone fleets were buckling. Tom’s Goku AI, usually his ace in the hole, was being dismantled by the enemy’s Akakenu AI.

Goku attempts a complex tactical flank? Akakenu plans a deeper counter-strategy and executes it with impossible precision.

Goku identifies a weakness in the enemy formation? It’s a trap. Akakenu left the opening intentionally, a logic bomb waiting to detonate.

Goku attempts full-chain control? Akakenu weaves through the data streams, dominating everything from the macro strategy down to the firing timing of individual turrets.

In the digital abstract, Tom could visualize his Goku AI—once a violent, invincible ape—now crouched and battered, covered in scars, passively enduring a beating it could not return.

The defense line of the Third Planet was trembling. It was on the verge of total collapse.

Tom’s eyes were bloodshot. He had two cards left to play.

First: Attrition. Maximize the material advantage of holding three planets. Flood the void with so much debris and metal that the enemy chokes on it. Exchange space for time.

Second: The Firefighters.

One hundred Mars-class battleships—the pinnacle of Tom’s current fleet—roared out of the shipyards. They were his lifeline.

In the chaos of the battlefield, a single shot from their main cannons could shatter the energy shields of the enemy’s manned vessels. Once a shield was down in this hellscape, death was instantaneous.

The Mars-class ships didn’t hold a line; they charged into the crises. Wherever the defense was buckling, a Mars-class battleship arrived, its medium and small energy cannons blazing, supported by a storm of laser fire and interstellar missiles. They turned desperate defeats into stalemates.

But even the Mars-class wasn’t invincible. The enemy had their own titans—giant battleships that could go toe-to-toe with Tom’s best.

Tom refused to give them a fair fight. Whenever the enemy titans advanced, Tom utilized the Mercury-class fodder and Goku’s desperate calculations to delay them, avoiding a head-on collision at all costs.

The defense line of the Third Planet flickered like a candle in a hurricane. It dimmed, it wavered, but through Tom’s gritted teeth and the sacrifice of billions of tons of resources, it refused to go out.

Tom was waiting.

He sat in his command center, watching the casualty counters spin like slot machines. He knew the path to victory wasn’t brilliance. It was endurance.

I have real planets, he thought, his gaze cold. I have near-infinite matter to convert into violence.

The Mechanical Disaster had a Flying Star. A massive fortress, yes, but finite. It was not a planet. It could not regenerate resources forever.

Time is on my side. Persist. Persist. Just keep breathing.

The Mechanical Disaster Alliance sensed this too. Their offensive waves grew more frantic, more violent, trying to break Tom before their own supplies ran dry.

His hand hovered over the activation sequence for the Unified Force Field.

It was his ultimate weapon. One press, and the tide might turn. But the battlefield was too chaotic, the variables too high. His computing power was stretched too thin to guarantee a decisive hit.

Not yet, Tom told himself, forcing his hand down. This is a one-time trump card. I cannot waste it on a gamble.

He had to endure.

Time lost its meaning. The meat grinder continued to turn. Days bled into months, and months bled into years.