The Moon.
A satellite orbiting Earth, a little over three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers away.
Hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
For the technology of this era, that was already close to the limit of what humanity could barely reach.
Ling Ke knew that if this world kept following its original track, then once the so-called god of Earth was born, only a few years would pass before humanity started pushing toward Venus and Mars.
But—
"Leaving aside Welt Yang, who crossed into a parallel world through a Star Gate…"
"the people here still haven't stepped out of the solar system through their own power."
"After all, even the Previous Era's Ark Project died halfway through and turned into a sealed package nobody could even open until fifty thousand years later."
Inside the Theater of Domination, Ling Ke came to that conclusion without much effort.
"So…"
His gaze dropped to the system screen in front of him.
Displayed on it was:
[Game Character Template: Medivac]
[Source: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty]
[Character Traits: health-bar mechanic, infinite energy, infinite ammunition, indestructible equipment, armored-mechanical unit…]
[Game Skills: advanced medical AI, rapid deployment corridor, scatter veil, transport, loading, healing, afterburners…]
[Background Talents: med station, triage station, nanobots, laser scalpel, growth stimulants, dual-channel resuscitator, warp system…]
[Profile: Full designation G-226 Medivac transport platform, converted from the APOD-33 dropship, capable of remote operation…]
This brand-new game template had appeared less than ten minutes ago.
And it was exactly because of that pull that Ling Ke changed course on the spot.
Yes.
On the spot.
By now, the endlessly reviving forces under Ling Ke's command already numbered in the tens of thousands.
With that kind of foundation, and with the massive amount of combat knowledge he had been cramming into himself lately, he had already split off several hundred Domination Puppets and built a dedicated think tank.
Or, to put it more simply—
a staff department.
And now, besides that staff department, he also had an information department, a defense department, an intelligence department, and so on.
With those in place, a lot of routine burdens no longer needed his personal attention.
To begin with, he no longer had to keep staring at the system screen day and night, waiting to see what kind of new pull or template it would spit out.
Because the people in the staff department would adjust, revise, and draft plans in real time based on his current situation and whatever new template or gain had just appeared.
At present, the plan Ling Ke was carrying out already had more than a thousand contingency branches prepared for emergencies alone.
And that number was still rising, one new game template at a time.
So—
"Our plan is always changing."
"For a human army, that kind of method would be suicidal."
"Because their speed of communication can't compare to ours."
"And besides, trust, hesitation, shifting judgment… there are too many variables for a human plan to survive intact."
"Only we, who are truly of one mind, can use this advantage perfectly."
"In other words…"
"the enemy will never be able to tell what we're actually trying to do."
Ling Ke knew that very well.
Even with the absurd learning ability he enjoyed through the combined effects of the Herrscher of Domination and the Doomsday Player system, even if he kept growing at a rate measured in thousands or tens of thousands, he could still be outplayed by the world-class minds on the other side.
He had no choice but to admit that.
The enemies he was facing now were Otto. Einstein. Tesla.
And maybe later, even people like Mobius and Vill-V.
He had no intention of underestimating them.
So—
"A mountain of feints will keep them busy guessing at my real target."
"Truth mixed with lies. The real hidden inside the fake."
"In the end, they won't be able to reach any answer at all."
"They'll have no choice but to come talk to 'me' themselves."
And as for why the members of Ling Ke's staff department had suddenly proposed taking the Moon—
"First, the moment the Medivac appeared, its built-in warp system gave our side basic interplanetary travel."
"If we're only talking about efficiency between Earth and the Moon, we leave the three organizations in the dust."
"They do have the ability to reach the Moon. But the number of people they can send, the number of trips they can make, and the cost they have to pay for each attempt… all of it forces them to move with extreme caution."
"As for us…"
"We pay nothing."
"And it was exactly because of that overwhelming gap…"
The Domination Puppets making up Ling Ke's staff department had remembered one unbelievably stupid move Sirin made during the Second Eruption.
She had been on the Moon.
She could have stayed there and kept dropping meteorites again and again. A few more waves of the hand, and all humanity would have been finished.
And yet she insisted on showing off. Went back to Earth herself. Then got beaten half to death from all sides.
From Ling Ke's current position as humanity's enemy, he genuinely did not know how to rate a blunder like that.
One had to remember—
human civilization on Earth back then had struggled just to send a handful of people to the Moon.
Meanwhile, Benares had simply flown there under her own power.
And then that ridiculous advantage had been thrown away by Sirin herself.
But now—
"Sirin saw the so-called Will of Honkai in the ruins on the Moon."
"That's how she ended up achieving her multi-core form."
"And considering that this so-called Will of Honkai was actually just one split instance of the Previous Era super-AI Prometheus putting on an act…"
"ugh…"
"could it be that after one look at Sirin, it decided she was stupid enough to hand all those gems to without worrying about what came next?"
Ling Ke still had enough room in his mood to crack a joke like that.
Of course, a joke was a joke.
The ruins of the old civilization on the Moon—
back when he had no way to reach them, naturally he had not wasted time thinking about them.
But now that he had the means, of course he had to seize them as fast as possible.
And besides, even Sirin had known how to throw meteorites from the Moon.
Yes, she had stupidly abandoned that best possible option in the end, but Ling Ke had no intention of wasting that kind of orbital killing power.
His logic was simple.
"If I rely only on my Domination Puppet army to kill people one by one, the efficiency for harvesting points is still far too low."
"But if I switch to dropping meteorites…"
Just look at Sirin's "brief" results.
In a matter of days, tens of millions had died.
"This…"
Ling Ke sneered.
"…is what they call a Rod from God."
Then he raised a hand.
Whoom.
On Earth, in the great Australian desert, large numbers of spatial gates opened across the surface.
One Medivac after another flew out of them.
Their engines were already burning hot.
Now they slowly rose into the air, engine noise climbing higher and higher.
And then—
Thrum.
Thrum.
Thrum.
More than a hundred Domination Puppet Medivacs activated their warp systems. They departed in groups, like a meteor shower flying in reverse, their target the moon overhead.
At the same time—
"Heh. So this is all Schicksal Headquarters' network amounts to."
Under Ling Ke's command, the Information Department moved first.
More than a hundred Domination Puppets designated Black Shadow had already hacked their way into Schicksal Headquarters.
They cut off its external communications.
And more than that—
they also blinded its orbital monitoring.
In fact, if they wanted, they could have made Schicksal Headquarters fall from the sky right now like Sokovia in those Marvel movies.
But—
"Not yet."
Inside the Theater of Domination, the real Ling Ke let a faint smile touch his mouth.
"So the protagonist team's little talking game has finally begun."
"What a pity."
"As things stand now…"
His smile turned cold.
"…there isn't a speech left in this world that can talk me down."