Chapter 3597

"Six more enemy reconnaissance planes have been shot down over Washington. The Air Force General personally visited the crash site, calling this a great victory on the path of human resistance and encouraging the Air Force to keep up the good work..."

"Latest news from Tokyo: The reconnaissance plane that had been hovering over Tokyo Tower the day before yesterday has been shot down, resulting in one minor injury. Eyewitnesses at the scene described the aerial combat as extremely intense!"

"The British Royal Family has issued a statement to mourn the combat heroes: The coffins of the three combat heroes who died in the air crash on the 23rd have been interred in the Royal Air Force cemetery, with the Queen personally attending the memorial. May the heroes rest in peace."

"Latest news from New Delhi: They claim to have shot down 1,300 enemy aircraft and successfully crippled one of the opponent's frigates, causing it to crash into the Indian Ocean, ranking first in this joint human combat operation..."

One broadcast after another never ceased. Since Brainiac launched a full-scale offensive, human resistance forces had not been dismantled; instead, they had grown stronger. News of enemy aircraft being destroyed continued to emerge from all over the world.

This made Brainiac unable to help but sigh at how humans really dared to brag.

There was a generational gap between Kryptonian and human technology. From the start of the fighting until now, no more than 300 combat aircraft had been destroyed in total. However, judging by global news reports, humans claimed to have shot down 100 times that number.

Their estimation of battlefield casualties was roughly "count it if you touch it"—as long as a weapon hit, regardless of whether it was shot down or not, it was all counted as a battle result. Moreover, they blew the role of nuclear bombs out of proportion: they had clearly only damaged the tail fin of one frigate, yet reports now claimed 10 frigates had been destroyed.

And, ordinary people actually believed it.

It was only at this moment that Brainiac realized his decision to split his forces was a mistake. He should have concentrated his power at the time to directly decapitate a national government to create losses that the media could not cover up; only then could he have achieved a deterrent effect.

By launching a full-scale offensive like this, it seemed as though every country had suffered losses, but the losses were not severe enough to cause social order to collapse, so the propaganda could continue to be concealed, and many more viable forces could be thrown into the battlefield. The originally anticipated blitzkrieg had been forcibly turned into a war of attrition.

Speaking of a war of attrition, theoretically, humans could not out-consume Brainiac. Because he was a "one man fed, the whole family is not hungry" situation—he was a silicon-based life form that could work endlessly without needing rest. However, the human state of emergency mobilization could not be maintained for long.

Once attrition reached the point where the propaganda machine could no longer hide it, society would inevitably fall into panic, and the social structure would collapse. By that time, even if ordinary people wanted to resist, they would be scattered stragglers, unable to achieve anything significant.

But the problem was that Brainiac still had other things to fight. If he spent two months here with humans, it would be Darkseid and Sinestro's turn to show him what a "black hand" meant.

Although he wanted to preserve Earth's viable forces as reinforcements for long-term operations, it now seemed he had to strike hard.

The frigates no longer held back; Brainiac directly launched a total extinction operation, using ship cannons as ground weapons, violently sweeping through the capitals of various countries to achieve the purpose of deterrence.

This move finally had some effect. After the command systems of various countries were destroyed, human society began to panic, and the intensity of resistance was much weaker than before.

But not long after, new governments emerged in other regions, or rather, the original regional governments were legitimized. A large number of ordinary people began to flock toward those places, and then they began to organize a new round of resistance.

Although not all countries could achieve this—for example, European countries were too small, and after one country's capital was destroyed, they could only go to another—this behavior of huddling together was being staged in every country, truly having the posture of resisting to the last person.

Brainiac had to go and destroy the governments in those places again. Even in the end, every place where humans gathered had been plowed over by him.

By this time, he was no longer trying to conquer humans so they could work for him; he was purely unconvinced, killing for the sake of killing.

But in the end, it was already mid-December, and Brainiac was still stuck in this human quagmire.

Now there was no organized government, but even guerrilla organizations were determined not to surrender and were going to fight Brainiac to the end.

And then, very unfortunately, the Apokolips Legion and the Yellow Lantern Corps arrived. This cycle also failed as expected.

After the reset, Brainiac began to reflect deeply:

The human race was very peculiar. Their lower limit was as low as their upper limit was high; they could be as shameless as they were selfless; they could be as fragile as they were resilient. They were simply a race that even Brainiac, with his 12th-level intellect, could not understand.

Actually, the previous cycle hadn't been easy either. The early stage was fine, relying on extreme force to destroy one government and provisional government after another. But in the later stage, many "hexagonal warriors" suddenly appeared.

Each one had both force and brains; they could command and coordinate; they could lead troops in battle and manage logistics; they could encourage soldiers and soothe the hearts of the people.

Moreover, these people were not full-time soldiers before: some were students, some were workers, some were white-collar workers, and there were even homeless people and beggars. Brainiac really couldn't understand, with their talents, how did they end up like this on Earth?

When I'm not here, you can let yourselves end up on the streets; the moment I arrive, you transform and become peerless national treasures. Are you all just targeting me?

Under the struggle of these people, Brainiac's fight hadn't actually been easy. The robots he produced weren't invincible, and he consumed quite a lot in the end. He tallied the results and found they far exceeded what he could bear.

He had to admit that his own impulsiveness was part of the reason, but the sudden "bursting" of human potential was the main cause. The combat power of humans in desperate situations made Brainiac feel that he had completely miscalculated the strength of this race.

This time, he learned from his pain and was determined not to step into this quagmire again: "If I can't afford to offend you, I can afford to hide. I'll just squat on Krypton and mass-produce troops; isn't it fine if I ignore Earth?"

The answer, of course, was no.

Not to mention that Krypton was not a mechanical civilization at all; by the time they went extinct, they were still in the early stages of mechanical production, and the legacy left for Brainiac was not enough.

More importantly, the vast majority of equipment on Krypton was adapted for Kryptonians, not for machines, meaning it required a humanoid biological entity to operate.

But the strength of the robots Brainiac produced did not reach the standard of Kryptonians. Even if they did, the production efficiency was not high enough, let alone iteration.

There was also a generational gap between Apokolips technology and Kryptonian technology. It was impossible to close the gap in just a few months; Brainiac could only choose to win by quantity. However, factors like the inconvenience of operation and the obsolescence of equipment meant his army was not prepared enough.

In the end, Brainiac was defeated again.

In the following few cycles, Brainiac had exhausted all methods, whether it was cooperating with one side to expel the other, or simply cooperating with Darkseid, none of which achieved his desired goal.

The situation even got worse: because whether it was Darkseid or Sinestro, they were the worst of the worst, the benchmarks of the despicable. Brainiac cooperating with them was like "seeking skin from a tiger," and in the end, he was naturally eaten clean without a scrap left.

After going around in circles, Brainiac ultimately had to choose to cooperate with humans. But the good news was: after experiencing several cycles, the human leadership finally realized this wasn't a dream.

Therefore, this time, the negotiations between humans and Brainiac went quite smoothly; humans fought for their survival, Brainiac strove for victory, and the two sides reached an unprecedented cooperation.

Just like the first time, Brainiac took full control of the human network. However, with the mechanical legion he brought from Krypton, this takeover was comprehensive and deep.

Because the facilities on Earth were too backward, Brainiac chose to let the vast majority of scientists go to Krypton first to restore Kryptonian equipment.

This move greatly improved the efficiency of the Kryptonian production line, because after all, Kryptonians were also carbon-based life forms and looked almost exactly like humans; humans best understood the purpose of their design and production of certain things, and thus had the means to optimize the production line at the fastest speed.

Moreover, Brainiac also utilized the memory from the second cycle—the cycle of the full-scale invasion of Earth—to pick out all the heroes who had caused him great trouble, forming a command headquarters and logistics department, borrowing their abilities and wisdom to further assess the battlefield situation and make favorable choices.

It could be said that the results achieved in this cycle of Brainiac's cooperation with humans were the best; 70% of the Parademon army was wiped out by them, and although the remainder caused damage, it was within an acceptable range.

The Yellow Lantern Corps was also beaten back by them. But as expected, the Yellow Lantern Corps retreated, and other Lantern Corps arrived. And the most troublesome thing was not anything else, but the Green Lantern Corps.

To be precise, it was the Green Lantern Corps from the side of the Guardians of the Universe, the little blue men. Although there weren't many of them, every one of them was an expert. Hal from this universe didn't make a move, and Brainiac really had to fight for his life to drive them out of the solar system.

As a result, Darkseid actually had another wave of reinforcements; the previous battles had completely hollowed out Krypton and humanity, and now they really couldn't squeeze out a single point. This operation was declared a failure again.

Resetting again, Brainiac cursed in the Justice League's conference room for half an hour; if the AI world were to select a "best rapper," Brainiac would be well-deserved.

Although the "dog planner" didn't act like a human, the fight still had to go on; after all, they had almost cleared the level in the previous cycle. Darkseid's final reinforcements weren't actually that strong; as long as they had a little more resources, they would definitely be able to beat them back.

Brainiac was like a player whose boss only had a sliver of health left before clearing the level; even though it was disgusting to the extreme and he was dizzy from the fight, he had to hold his breath and finish the level completely.

He reflected a bit and felt that the strategy from the last round was correct, it was just that the details were too lacking in polish. Moreover, the human side was also a mess, delaying progress several times due to personal emotions or organizational disadvantages.

There was no way to correct these detailed problems, they could only be slowly smoothed out. Fortunately, under Brainiac's strong demand, the Justice League took another small step back, giving him 100 slots to retain memories, allowing those scientists and capable people to accompany him through more cycles.

And in the office at Gotham University, watching the previously torn-off calendar pages fly back one by one, the month returning from December to July again, Schiller sighed.

Truly, "tomorrow follows tomorrow, how many tomorrows are there." I don't know how many more times 1999 will have to pass.

?? Still thinking about what to write for the next unit.

? (End of chapter)