Ironclad Group Chat: Red and Black Lists Engraved with Heroic Epics

[Hanabi: Despite possessing power that wouldn't even faze a locust plague, she's completely controlled by a few old men in the council, forced to work tirelessly for them for nothing. Tsk tsk tsk, it's been a long time since I've seen anything like this in the universe.]

[Star: Jing Yuan truly deserves to be the General of the Immortal Ship, and he certainly doesn't deserve his head of white hair. He's even more cunning than a white fox; he guessed this on the first try!]

March 7th: The biggest...hidden danger?!

She understood what it meant, of course. But she just couldn't accept it. The heroes didn't receive flowers and ice cream; instead, the first thing they saw in their eyes was suspicion?

[Sunday: The Iron Cavalry's cold reception is regrettable, but also due to human nature, so it's not surprising. In the eyes of the Grammer Republic Parliament, the Iron Cavalry are weapons they had to develop out of desperation, only they happen to possess life. When united in hatred against a common enemy, a self-aware weapon is quite… convenient, but once the war is over, this self-awareness begins to become unsettling. Perhaps, for Grammer, the possibility of the Iron Cavalry developing disloyalty is even more terrifying than the Iron Cavalry actually harboring rebellious intentions.]

[Star: So, what exactly did the Grammer Council do? They're not planning to destroy all the Iron Cavalry, are they?]

[Black Tower: If they still had any basic rationality, they wouldn't have made such an extreme choice, unless they'd lost their minds or wanted to die. After all, that would only force the Iron Cavalry to rebel en masse, and wouldn't achieve anything.]

[Aista: But, Lady Black Tower, what about the little Black Towers...?]

[The Black Tower: How can geniuses be equated with those rotten cowards? The little Black Towers aren't intelligent enough to become living beings, and besides... even all of them combined couldn't defeat me. But Grammer is different. At their peak, the Iron Riders probably held a place throughout the entire universe. The Council, on the other hand, is practically unarmed, but they must have possessed some kind of safety mechanism from the very beginning of creating the Iron Riders. The two sides are not evenly matched, yet both unexpectedly have the potential to eliminate the other. If things go as expected, this will be a game of cowards that lasts for several years. The Council's most sensible choice is to gradually test and pressure, taking away a little power each time, attempting to coexist on a tightrope.]

[March 7th: My goodness, how did it turn into a political intrigue drama?]

[Silver Wolf: LOL, Black Tower, a shut-in at home, actually knows all this? Looks like he's spent a lot of time outsmarting his puppets.]

[Black Tower: Heh, your account is not bad, but now...]

[Silver Wolf: Want to try again? No way! Don't push me!]

The Iron Cavalry's silver armor glowed. Several lines of text appeared.

Several arcs of fire streaked across the night sky, crossed the horizon where dawn was breaking, and headed toward different star sectors of Grammer—a daily routine that the inhabitants of the Republic were both most familiar with and most terrified of.

The Silver Shadow armored figures soared through the sky, rushing against time to the devastated battlefield, with no time to look down on the scene they had been guarding day and night.

The Queen's command was not to be questioned. Warriors with similar faces were born from the incubation chambers, swearing allegiance to the Queen and reclaiming the skies of Grammer. The iron cavalry traversed mountains of corpses and seas of blood from swarming flying insects, burned the charred embers of the silverfish's carcasses, and shattered the broken scales and remnants of giant mandibles... The destiny of the Grammer Iron Cavalry was to endure the entropy change of slow disintegration, burning fiercely on the edge of life and death.

Until the flames are completely extinguished, until the swarms of insects that blot out the sky turn into scorched earth, until no one survives—this daily routine will continue...

What is life? The acceleration of the propelling armor gripped their chests, and the piercing pain of entropy deprivation briefly surfaced in their limbs; in that moment, they tasted a fleeting sense of being alive.

[Bluebird: It seems surprisingly alright? Entropy loss is certainly pitiful, but Grammer was completely incapable of solving this problem, wasn't he?]

[Fu Xuan: That's roughly it. But one thing makes all this tragic: the loyalty of the Grammer Cavalry. Currently, each of them seems to be quite similar in temperament to Liu Ying; they shoulder all the dangers without a trace of rebellion. But the Grammer Council will not cherish this loyalty. When they, in their weakened position, try to control the Cavalry, and when the Cavalry compromises time and again, their deepest feeling will not be safety, but fear—a fear of being devoured at any moment. That fear will force them to make seemingly rational decisions, but in reality, decisions tantamount to self-destruction—that is, to completely destroy their "weapons" in some way.]

[Yao Guang: That's only right. This balance achieved through mutual deterrence is unstable, especially since we all know it. Both empires and republics have become dust of history.]

The last piece of equipment on the Iron Cavalry lit up, a testament to a less-than-optimistic past.

The iron cavalry's footprints are all over every corner of the Grammer "Empire," like a blazing meteor, yet they cannot escape the "dream" woven by Titania.

The people of the Republic worry about the military units born for war, wondering how much of that never-before-seen "empire" overlaps with the territory they know...

The Queen bestowed upon her knightly honor and faith; the iron cavalry offered their loyalty and promises to the Queen… New humans continued to emerge from the incubation chambers, assigned numbers and missions; the old humans, hiding beneath steel barriers, anxiously enjoyed the long-awaited peace. This tranquil lie needed to be exposed; the means of war that shook the very essence of humanity should not exist. When the natural disaster subsided, those filled with fear would utterly destroy the distorted products of war—

The iron cavalry's greaves shattered the sky; they could reach any star if they so desired.

However, the "empire" was nowhere to be found; only a predetermined path lay before the iron cavalry, one end leading to death, the other to themselves.

Outside the light screen, in the group chat, all the lively discussion fell silent, and it took a long time before someone spoke.

[Jing Yuan: Hmm... No need to elaborate. The meaning is obvious. Although the Iron Cavalry is brave and few can match the strength of the onlookers at this moment, these new humans are completely rejected by the old humans. The idea of ​​destroying them all has never been completely rejected. Even without the interference of the old humans, plagued by entropy loss, they will eventually perish like ephemeral fungi and cicadas in a "dark winter" that belongs only to them.]

[Hanabi: Tsk, Titania's queenly job is so pathetic. On one hand, she's training the Iron Cavalry and trying to mend conflicts that are impossible to truly resolve, and on the other hand, she has to watch the Council's face. How could Lady Hanabi tolerate this? Why doesn't she dare to fight the Council?]

[Black Tower: How do you know there isn't? The locust plague is over, but new humans are still being born in the incubation chambers in droves, much faster than the normal reproductive cycle of mammals. Perhaps at some point, the number of new humans will far surpass that of the old humans. And who can say that this Empress of Titania hasn't made any efforts for rebellion, or for her knights to fight for land under the sun?]