Chapter 1000: Battle for the High Tower (35)

"I hope that before you start this topic, you didn't expect us to have a warm, harmonious, and moving heart-to-heart talk like true teacher and student or father and son."

Shiler put down the cutlery again, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and then said, "If you want to find that feeling, I suggest you go find Harvey or Gordon; both of them are visibly going to be good fathers."

"Do you know why every conversation between us ends in an extremely unpleasant atmosphere?" Shiler raised a question and then answered it himself: "Because you equally suspect everyone in this world, including me, and I equally hate everyone in this world, including you."

"Then..." Batman slowly opened his mouth, "If I no longer suspect everyone in this world, will you no longer hate everyone in this world?"

"What did you say?" Shiler narrowed his eyes. Suddenly, Batman saw him reveal a manic smile again, but soon, Shiler stretched out both hands to pull down the corners of his mouth, and he shook his head vigorously.

"Damn it!" Shiler cursed, and then he muttered to himself, "Do you really believe it? Do you think Batman wouldn't suspect others? No longer so serious... no... you smile really ugly..."

Shiler was like fighting with the air. With a "clang," the dinner knife fell to the ground. Shiler gritted his teeth and said to the demon beside him: "Claude! Drive him out! Throw him outside the castle!"

The strong demon moved toward Batman. Batman did not want to have a conflict with him. He stood up and walked toward the outside of the castle.

Just as he was about to walk out of the castle, he saw Shiler bend down, pick up the dinner knife, and like someone who had been hungry for a long time, begin to wolf down the food on the plate.

Batman knew this was not normal, but he knew he could not stimulate Shiler any further. Thus, he left with a heart full of thoughts and then found Alfred, intending to ask him about his views on the mine's system and structure.

"Professor Shiler discussed the issue of communism with you? I think he must have told you that you are a capitalist, so no matter how you lead the mine, you are exploiting these slaves."

As soon as Alfred opened his mouth, Batman was a little surprised, but what he said next made Batman even more surprised.

"You thought I would tell you that you should now give up leadership, let all the demons vote, exercise their democratic rights, and do the same for the leadership of other departments."

"However, Batman, the theoretical books you have read should have told you that everything must start from actual conditions, one cannot sit and fantasize, and one cannot apply things rigidly."

"You cannot take the Soviet system directly and apply it, nor can you take some kind of system and force it into the current situation... What is the situation now?"

Alfred answered his own question: "We are still in Belial's territory. Within three days, the news of the mine incident will reach his ears, and the elite army Belial possesses is even more elite than General Fuxin's demon army."

"Even if it takes him some time to mobilize a large army to come here, for us and all the slaves here, it is still a matter of life and death. You must first ensure that we can survive, and then we can talk about other things."

"There is no more time for you to educate the masses, select talent, organize elections, and arrange departments. We cannot even be called a phased victory right now; we can only say we have taken half a step out of the quagmire."

"You should have read in history books that in the starting stage, one does not need to pursue too much procedural justice; surviving is the most important thing. If someone tells you at this time that your procedure is unjust, so everything is meaningless, then you should give him a punch."

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"Nothing is more meaningful than living."

Seeing Batman's expression, Alfred smiled and said, "You are surprised? I already said, we are not the kind of extreme fanatics you imagine. In fact, if we didn't understand how to make decisive trade-offs and be flexible, our cause could not have reached this point."

"So, you can fully exert your abilities, or rather, if you give up your leadership position now and don't exert your abilities, then all our previous efforts will have been in vain."

After listening to Alfred's words, Batman stood in place and nodded. He had to admit that he still had some stereotypical prejudices against the KGB. After all, he was a native-born American, and no matter how wise and clear-headed he was, it was hard to avoid being influenced.

Batman gently stroked the edge of his cape with one hand, and then he said, "In my discussion with Shiler, a method to stimulate war potential in a short time was mentioned. I think he might be referring to a planned economy. Do you think it can be implemented here?"

Alfred shook his head and said, "It's not as simple as you think. The Soviet model could succeed because the Communist International acted as blood vessels, the industrial production of various countries provided blood for the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union acted as the heart, constantly digesting and converting this blood into nutrients, and then transporting it back to lead everyone forward together."

"However, this model also buried hidden dangers for later... Of course, let's not mention these for now. To apply this model, the prerequisite is that the scale must be large enough, and we are currently..."

"So, it returns to that problem again. We must win a battle first to expand the scale, but to win a battle, we must expand the scale..." Batman was silent for a long while, as if he were thinking.

"The starting stage is always like this. Every country in this world like the Soviet Union has a difficult history." Alfred looked at Batman and said, "The next period of time is destined to be very difficult, but do you remember that sentence? You are not fighting alone."

Batman raised his head to look at the distant sky. He thought, perhaps, in his life, he would never have such a precious opportunity again to let him act freely in such a large-scale war and exert his strategic mind to the extreme.

Even if he advanced just one small step, it would be an extra gain for him. Since that was the case, why not give it a try?

Returning to the mine, Batman first found Merkel and began to arrange production issues. There were no smelters in the mine, but there were some smelting furnaces used to smelt production tools.

The smelting furnaces all used magma as energy, and the efficiency was also very high, so Batman did not need to start from scratch. But the difficulty was that the smelting furnaces only had molds for tools like pickaxes or mine cart parts, and what Batman needed now were equipment and weapons.

In other words, they had to start from scratch to research the mineral ratios for equipment smelting and the enchantment of weapons.

However, fortunately, the army led by General Fuxin was not completely wiped out. Many demon soldiers were captured, and they also expressed their willingness to fight for Batman, and the armor and weapons on their bodies could provide a certain reference.

Batman took the lead in forming a scientific research team. The main members were Merkel, magicians from General Fuxin's former army, and soldiers from the logistics management department. Their main task was to analyze the original equipment and use the minerals already in the mine to forge armor that belonged to the mine's army.

Batman's scientific research ability need not be discussed, but the research proceeded very smoothly, and there were other reasons. For instance, the Seven Mountains Mine was the second-largest mine in Belial's territory, but in fact, the completeness of its mineral types ranked first.

And, General Fuxin was, after all, the Empress's cousin. Although he hadn't participated in any large-scale wars in recent years, the quality of the soldiers under him was relatively high, and the magicians were also quite smart. A few understood as soon as they were taught, which greatly saved Batman's energy.

Soon, a simple equipment casting production line was set up. Mining, transporting, and smelting were done in one go.

And Batman also improved the original ecology of the mine. He did not distinguish between civilians, workers, and soldiers. Everyone was a part on the assembly line, everyone had to participate in production, everyone had to participate in training, and everyone was striving to survive.

Military training had always been Merkel's responsibility. Batman no longer adopted the old demon army system, that is, demons with large body sizes in the army were heavy troops wearing heavy armor, and demons with small body sizes were small troops wearing light armor. This classification method was convenient, but it actually had big problems.

Batman adopted a modern military system and made improvements to a certain extent. Demons were distinguished by functionality, and different races would appear in different battalion groups with different numbers due to the differences in their functionality.

For example, in a light infantry battalion group, there would be more small-sized demons, but there would also be average-sized demons. In the battalion group station, large-sized demons were responsible for defense, moving, and building defensive works, while once a raid operation was conducted, small-sized demons would go into battle.

Of course, because various demons had different marching speeds, being organized into one team often resulted in the vanguard troops having already arrived, while the subsequent troops hadn't even walked one-third of the way. To make up for this gap, Batman could only begin to think about manufacturing troop transport vehicles.

He did have a ready-made reference: the mine carts traveling through the mountains were a very good research object.

In the human world, fighting in the front and building in the back was also very normal. It was just that, because of human physical fitness and the limitations of the era, it was difficult to connect all occupied areas with railways after occupying a certain place. There were neither that many materials and workers, nor was there a great necessity.

But in hell, this railway network had the foundation to be implemented. On one hand, Batman occupied a mine, and what a mine lacked the least were minerals for smelting rails or building mine carts.

On the other hand, the resources demons needed to maintain physiological needs were relatively few, and their strength was relatively large. Simply put, they worked fast. As long as they were deployed in a proper way, the speed of infrastructure construction was very amazing.

Of course, the vast majority of demon lords mobilized troops using portals. The magicians on Batman's side could use portals, but portals required many materials. They couldn't gather them for the time being, and even if they could, the consumption was relatively large. Batman didn't have that much money.

Moreover, a reasonably planned and highly constructed railway network might not be worse than a portal. After all, a portal was one-time use, and it required a large amount of materials and had to be prepared many days in advance. If it were interfered with, the loss of materials was secondary; the personnel in the transmission might very well get lost in the turbulence of space and never come back.

Even as rich as Belial was, 80% of the material flow in his territory relied on special species of demons to carry. For example, the huge sand worms in the mine were a type of pack demon.

Batman naturally didn't forget these sand worms. Before, when he was preparing to deal with General Fuxin, he had carefully thought about strategies to deal with this group of bugs.

However, before General Fuxin could exert his strength, he went to provide help to Shiler. Therefore, Batman picked up a complete sand worm team for nothing.

And this indeed provided him with great help in the initial battles. ===== CHAPTER 1001 =====