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Chapter 581: 379: The Centipede Dies but Never Stiffens_2
Chapter 581: 379: The Centipede Dies but Never Stiffens_2
Chapter 581: Chapter 379: The Centipede Dies but Never Stiffens_2
His tone was very relaxed.
Nora Camp nodded gloomily, “I just read the Scientific Executive Council’s analysis report, and the possibility you mentioned is over fifty percent.”
Harrison Clark turned his head, his gaze passing through the transparent cover of the two-layer treatment cabin, falling on her profile, his heart thudding, and he secretly thought it was bad.
She had kept her back to him just before, not letting him see her full face, but now that he saw her profile, he found something was wrong.
An hour ago, she was radiant, with bright eyes and a determined gaze, exuding a strong self-confidence befitting a high-ranking decision-maker.
In just an hour, her cheekbones had become more prominent, and her eye sockets had sunk.
Most importantly, her eyes had lost their previous sharpness.
“How’s Martha Owen over there? Just now, I saw the Research Center’s space station getting really close, already entering the enemy ship’s firing range.”
Nora Camp shook her head, “She’s fine, lucky enough, the space station retreated in time after collecting the data.”
But she immediately added, “However, there were still some unexpected casualties. Dr. Connor had an accidental explosion while analyzing the fragments of the Blade Mantis’s arm, and he sacrificed himself.”
Harrison Clark was stunned, unconsciously recalling the old man’s disrespectful appearance in his mind, and also recalling the old man’s impassioned “Cosmic Memory Theory” in the last timeline.
This time, they had clearly won, but unexpectedly, the old man didn’t even have a chance to leave any last words.
If he hadn’t asked, the old man would most likely have slipped away quietly without a sound.
Who knows how many people have sacrificed themselves in the end.
Only when Harrison Clark finally thought of checking the death toll, his breath stopped.
For now, not a single one of the eight regular army war zones remains.
The casualty rate for the reserve army is also over seventy percent.
The total death toll is 296 billion.
Not a person, not a thousand, but a billion.
Out of 410 billion participants in the war, only 114 billion remain after this battle.
Harrison Clark had guessed that the death toll would be severe before, but when the actual numbers appeared before his eyes, it was still shocking.
He jolted awake, suddenly understanding Nora Camp’s mood.
He had become increasingly numb to the emotions of losing comrades in one timeline after another.
Since he never dared to hope for victory, he firmly numbed himself, always believing that he would meet these comrades again later, so he quickly withdrew from grief when he saw them sacrificing themselves, and threw himself into the next battle without stopping to forget the pain.
When he believed that he would meet them again, he had already lost his instinct to look back at those who pushed him forward.
I… I have become so cold-blooded.
“Sigh!”
Harrison Clark also sighed, both for the dead and for himself.
He knew this wasn’t right, but it’s easier said than done, and it’s hard to change.
Nora Camp struggled to raise her hand, rubbed her eyes, and apologized, “I’m sorry, I should be happy.”
Harrison Clark found it absurd, she had even developed a self-blaming personality?
He shook his head with a bitter smile, “You don’t need to apologize.”
After some thought, he continued, “You don’t need to apologize to others either. You haven’t done anything wrong, you have fulfilled the responsibility of a commander-in-chief perfectly.”
Nora Camp knew she had been seen through, “But I should have done better. It’s just two hours, just one war… sigh…”
“We’re not the ones who started the war, and our technological level is far behind. It’s already good that we could win. There’s no need to strive for perfection.”
“But the one who gave the orders was me.” Nora Camp forced a smile, “Actually, I have studied all these psychological aspects. I am not a particularly sentimental person, but the death toll is too high, really too high.”
Harrison Clark remained silent for a long time.
He thought of a kind of psychological trauma disease called Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, one subtype of PTSD.
Many battle-hardened war heroes who didn’t blink an eye when killing people couldn’t escape its grasp, still suffering from it even years after retirement.
The incidence rate of the disease is even higher among senior commanders.
Nora Camp’s stress response came very quickly, even faster than Harrison Clark imagined, which could be related to her overexertion and even more related to the terrifying number of casualties.
If, someday, humans set foot in the universe and become a huge species spanning across the Milky Way Galaxy, participating in larger-scale civilization wars, perhaps humanity could gradually adapt to such colossal sacrifice.
But it’s still too early now.
Although humans have spread across the Solar System, until they step out of it, they remain under the scope of Earthlings and cannot be considered a cosmic civilization.
This is humanity’s first participation in a cosmic war, and Nora Camp is the first real cosmic war-level commander.
She can hardly find any experience from her predecessors to learn and draw from, nor does she possess a cosmic civilization-level worldview that has gradually formed after hundreds or thousands of years.
She has actually achieved the ultimate strength that a human being could reach.
Harrison Clark, on the other hand, is an anomaly. His life experience that breaks thinking barriers doesn’t come from the expansion of space but from deepening along the time dimension.
He has what others don’t.
This feeling can’t be simply obtained by flipping through his memory recordings, and no matter how immersive they are, they will never be deep enough.
For the mother of this timeline’s child, those who sacrifice themselves will not be able to start again.
Nora Camp asked again, “Do you think I’m really embarrassing?”
Harrison Clark shook his head, “Actually, it’s not too bad, you haven’t shown this side of you in front of others. I bet if you went back to your post right now and commanded the next war, there would be no problem at all.”